Weeknotes 2.6

Weeknotes is a bit of a misnomer for this post as having skipped one and spent some time away from the day job, I’ve had time to contemplate some wider topics which have been bugging me for a while, so these are not strictly notes about the week gone by.

It’s going to be a long one, so you might want to grab a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits before you start reading. I like those Fox ones which are more chocolate than biscuit, but I don’t discriminate; any biscuit’s a good biscuit in my book. In fact, I’m now distracted by biscuits and may need a snack before I settle down to write…

Hang on…

A snack selector wheel with various food emojis around its circumference.

And I’m back, with a Tunnocks caramel wafer (aka the King of Snacks).

I should probably start writing the ‘proper’ stuff now, eh?

Getting Back to the Point: The Why of Weeknotes

I have Jonathan Kerr to thank for this week’s change of tack, as his excellent notes last week got me thinking about why we write and expose our life to the world on a weekly basis.

Weeknotes S03E19

I had the somewhat uncomfortable realisation that many of my recent posts have been motivated by a desire for external validation, rather than self-reflection or growth. Since the New Year I’ve started to resent the time I pour into them, and as such they’ve been feeling superficial and less honest.

Perhaps this is just the natural cycle of a personal blog; after a time it becomes mundane or repetitive or simply too tiring at the end of a week, and that’s a signal to switch it up or take a break. I haven’t made any definite decisions either way about how to progress these notes, but I’ll see how I feel over the coming weeks.

I’ve also been considering all those ideas I stick at the end of my notes with the intention of coming back to them. I know my writing capacity is limited — I get to a point every week where I reach my limit of coherent sentence construction — and if I want any of these ideas to become posts of their own they really deserve some undivided attention.

A case in point, this blog post started in weeknotes 2.2 has been stuck in draft for two weeks:

I am convinced that the creators of Scrum picked the wrong rugby analogy. So convinced, in fact, that I made a load of notes on my phone on why a rolling maul is a better demonstration of team dynamics.

I’d like to finish it before the end of the Six Nations (so I can pretend it’s at least somewhat topical!) which will need dedicated time and headspace.

Becoming a Better Delivery Manager

Those of you who have been reading my notes for a while may have noticed that my job has changed considerably since November, when I took on some Delivery Manager responsibilities in our platform build team. It wasn’t exactly clear what my remit was other than to support the team, and as my job hasn’t officially changed there’s never been an obvious time to ‘announce’ it. So hey, here is my little announcement, buried deep in my weeknotes — I have a (functionally) new job!

It’s difficult to describe how I feel about this role, other than to say it feels like a much better ‘fit’ for me. It’s much more interactive than my previous role, which suits my extrovert tendencies, and I’m enjoying the intellectual and problem-solving challenges.

This week I travelled to London to attend the GDS ‘Working Level for Delivery Managers’ Course. This was a huge opportunity to learn from an establishment that is considerably further ahead of us in terms of agile working practices and digital service delivery, and as this is a role that is not only new to me but new to my organisation, it was intriguing and reassuring to hear a different point of view.

As for most training courses and events of this type the value is in the conversations, and there’s only so much I can share through words and photographs*; these notes will give you a flavour of the course but not the full detail. I found the whole week fascinating with lots of ideas for practical action to take back to the office on Monday.

If you’re a starting or developing DM I would highly recommend attending. These courses are increasingly popular and book up quickly, so I’d advise keeping a close eye on the information page. You’ll need a training agreement in place for your organisation, so consider looking into that in advance of booking.

Working level for delivery managers course description

*I’ve added detailed captions to all my photographs, in an attempt both to make this post accessible and to help anyone reading to pick out the highlights from the proliferation of post-it notes. I would welcome any feedback in how to improve them.

Goals

I like to set myself a small number of goals prior to any training or networking event, as it helps me to focus my attention on the topics most important to me, ask questions that address specific knowledge gaps or work challenges, and commit to action when I return home.

Although they’re numbered they’re not in any particular order, in fact I think number four (conquering my imposter syndrome) was probably the most important.

A scribbled mind map made in my hotel room on Monday evening. My goals were as follows: [1] To be able to confidently lead agile ceremonies [2] Understand other roles in agile team e.g. product manager [3] Understand balance of delivery speed, quality and team welfare [4] Convince myself that I deserve this role [5] Understand challenges and coping strategies of more experienced DMs [6] Learn difference between good and great DM

Day 1

Broadly covered:

• Icebreaker — three things about you, favourite travel destination, party trick or desired superpower, last experience of butterflies
• The Cynefin Model which describes different types of problems (simple, complicated, complex) and the corresponding approaches required to address them
• The Agile Manifesto and underlying Principles, and how these relate to the role of Delivery Model

[Left]: The 12 Agile Principles and the role of a DM in upholding these, e.g. to maintain customer satisfaction through delivery of valuable software as our highest priority, a DM needs to remove blockers or distractions that undermine delivery. [Right]: An exercise to prioritise the components of the Agile Manifesto. We considered customer collaboration and responding to change as our highest priorities, and processes & tools and comprehensive documentation as lower priorities.

[Left]: The Wall of Fame. Illustrated index cards representing each attendee on the course, 14 in total. [Right]: The Cynefin Framework, which separates problems into simple (known knowns / best practice), complicated (known unknowns / experts required), complex (unknown unknowns / emergent practice) and chaotic (unknowable unknowns / novel practice).

Day 2

Broadly covered:

• The respective roles of a Delivery Manager (also known as Scrum Master), Product Owner and Team Member
• Foundations of Scrum
• Kanban
• Crafting a vision or mission statement

[Left]: The Venn Diagram of a Delivery Manager — agile practises (e.g. facilitating retros, estimation and sprint planning), team dynamics (e.g. facilitating conflict, looking after team health) and delivery support (e.g. shielding team from extra / random requests, stakeholder management). [Right]: Responsibilities of a Product Owner (e.g. conveying the product vision) vs. Scrum Master/DM (e.g. remove impediments / blockers) vs. Team (e.g. commits to a sprint backlog) vs. everyone (e.g. inspects and adapts to improve performance).

[Left]: The Scrum cycle — product backlog, sprint backlog, stand up, sprint, sprint review and retro — and the manifestation of each of the agile principles through this process. e.g. The team should embody principle 12 “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly” in retro and throughout the following sprint. [Right] Outline of a Kanban board; a tool used to visualise workflow. It’s predicated on limiting work in progress in order to maintain momentum, and uses metrics of lead time (time taken from entering backlog to being done) and cycle time (time taken from starting to finishing task) to measure progress.

Day 3

Broadly covered:

• User story mapping
• Motivation and values
• Team dynamics — I-shaped and T-shaped people, Tuckman, Belbin, Managing Team Roles Indicator (MTR-i) and Myers Briggs
• Servant leadership and team coaching

[Left]: Using story mapping to compare our journeys to work, find common patterns, and refine our minimal viable product (MVP). Each individual has a horizontal row and common actions are grouped vertically. From there the simplest viable pathway can be identified (e.g. get up, get dressed, leave house, walk to public transport, take public transport, arrive) and less urgent details grouped into further releases (e.g. eat breakfast, drive to work). [Right]: Slide entitled “Why tell stories?”. Reasons include: verbal communication, comprehensible by everyone, build tacit knowledge

[Left]: Identifying actions we could take as DMs to embody the 10 characteristics of a servant leader. This example is for empathy — we identified actions such as “share rewards, recognise good work of all types”, “find out who the team are as individuals” and “create blended teams”. [Right]: Notes from a video of Neil Tait speaking on what sets apart great Delivery Managers. His advice: show up, deliver, be kind, repeat. Unfortunately I cannot find a link for this video online.

Commitment to Action

On the final day we were encouraged to write down a few things we would try at work in the coming weeks, following on from what we learned on the course. We exchanged copies of these notes so we can hold each other accountable. These were mine:

Four post-it notes representing my commitments: [1] Challenge the MVP — is it really minimal viable? [2] Don’t squeeze the retro [3] Find community of other Delivery Managers [4] Implement simple measures of sprint progress

Confidence

[Deep breath]. I tried to write this section last week but I was feeling angry at the world, and one of the lessons I learnt very early in my career was to never write while angry. Another week on with more time to reflect and I am much calmer and ready to share.

A GIF of a growing and shrinking shape; a visual guide for slowing and deepening your breath. I find these kinds of GIFs use when I’m anxious or angry and in need of calm. You can try it without the image too: 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out.

I’ve had a creeping sense of something not being right for a while, and it’s taken until now (and breaking down in tears at someone else’s leaving do*) to realise why I’ve been feeling ‘off’… My confidence has been knocked repeatedly over the last year, to the point where I doubt myself more often than I back myself.

I can’t name the specific incidents that have caused this, but I can say that even starting as a confident person, as I was, if you are put in a prolonged position of uncertainty no amount of positive feedback will convince you that you are good enough. Add into the mix some particular biting (and at times quite personal) feedback, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a downward spiral.

A number of people have tried to counsel me over the last few months, telling me I needed to be more confident and that I am good at my job, but somehow those words aren’t very comforting. I’ve also realised that social confidence is a completely different beast from inner confidence; I can hold a room and make conversation with almost anyone, but that projection of confidence is a far cry from the inner monologue of your personal value and ability.

After last week’s outburst (*I am so sorry — it feels like the height of rudeness to cry at someone else’s party, but when the floodgates open it’s really hard to stop…) I decided I had to do something about it.

These are some of the things I’ve been doing to build my confidence, and although I’m only one week in I’m already feeling their effects.

1. Conscious Consumption

My primary focus of the week has been consuming media that makes me feel better about myself; things that are not only intellectually challenging or career-related, but give a boost to my self-esteem.

📖 ‘Mad Girl’ by Bryony Gordon — A reminder that the world does not exist in black and white. You can be both happy and struggling, and you don’t need to be ill or unhappy ‘enough’ to seek support.

Mad Girl

🎧 The Guilty Feminist Podcast with Deborah Frances-White — Humans are messy and contradictory, and perfection is overrated. Covering all sorts of important world-changing topics with an injection of humour: equality, fallibility, privilege, facing criticism, fear.

Episodes - The Guilty Feminist

📺 ‘Perfection, Imposter Syndrome and Anxiety’ by Jo Franchetti at #YouGotThisConf 2019 — Imposter syndrome is everywhere, we just don’t talk about it; and it’s not lazy to take time off.

You Got This - Jo Frachetti

🎧 ‘A Million Dreams’ from The Greatest Showman — I draw a lot of my energy from music, and although ‘This is Me’ was the anthem that blew up after the film’s release, this is my favourite song that I play on loop in the car. These lyrics make me feel ready to take on the world:

I think of what the world could be
A vision of the one I see
A million dreams is all it’s gonna take
A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make

2. Uplifting Company

I’m so grateful to the many people who I’ve spoken to in the last fortnight who’ve lifted my spirits.

On Monday I had dinner with Alex and caught up on work, life, hobbies and pets over delicious Italian food at Brizzi’s.

On Tuesday I had coffee with Steve Messer and talked all things weeknotes (including our most surprising reader), migrating away from Medium and GDS sticker designs. He also introduced me to the post-it app. Later in the day I had dinner with Ria who started her new job this week.

On Thursday I managed to grab Rob for a drink and exchange of war stories. We haven’t seen each other since he joined GDS in November, and I am so glad to hear he is enjoying his new role.

I also found time for dinner with two school friends, who never fail to make me laugh.

To top it all off, I participated in this month’s #blabchat; a twitter chat of like-minded individuals working in business transformation/service design/digital across the country. This month’s topic was experimentation and rapid prototyping, and we can all relive some of it through Michelle’s excellent write-up. My only regret is that it’s only an hour a month — more please!

Quick & Dirty Experimentation — A #Blabchat Round Up

This amount of socialising definitely isn’t suitable long-term (for my energy levels or my bank balance!) but it was a huge boost this week when I really needed it.

3. Confident Actions

Think about the boldness with which you could live if you talked, walked, danced and dressed like the bravest part of you. — Deborah Frances-White, from ‘The Guilty Feminist: From our noble goals to our worst hypocrises’

The hardest, but probably most necessary, stage in this mission to build my confidence is to act confidently. I started small this week:

• I wore a bold patterned dress to the first day of my course. I was tempted to keep it in my suitcase for day two and see what everyone else was wearing, but decided to forgo my insecurities and wear it anyway. If I feel good in it, why shouldn’t I wear it?
• I’ve started recording and filming some of my music. It’s something I have shied away from in the past, as I don’t like my face on film, but I’m prioritising memories in later life over my current foibles.

This is definitely something I am going to have to continue working at. I don’t believe confidence is something you have and keep forever; it is shaped by life and fear and luck, and you have to keep building yourself up.

Gratitude

This week I am thankful for:

• The sunshine. It’s been a beautiful week, the snowdrops are coming out, and it’s having a noticeable positive effect on my mood.
• London public transport. I know we all love to complain when public transport goes wrong, but I’ve had a brilliant week of unimpeded travel.
• My home, and a safe place to sleep every night. The number of homeless people I saw on the tube this week is heartbreaking, and I wish I’d had something to give them.
• The internet. What did we do before Google and Twitter to answer all our questions?
• To have a voice and safe space to share my thoughts with this community. Not everyone has this opportunity, or the security to be able to share openly.

I forgot to take note of the time when I started writing these. At a guess I’d say I’ve spent 25+ hours over the course of a month or so thinking about the content, and in the order of 3–4 hours writing it down. That’s more than normal but felt right for these topics, which needed considerably more soul-searching.