Category: General

This week I have learned: Sometimes it's not about the technology, but the broader why that teams and organisations are structured. In various conversations with clients this week, challenges of shifting skills, structure and approaches appear to be running alongside challenges of building and deploying tech. It comes back to some of the conversations I … Continue reading Weeknote 593: exploring

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about concepts of "data products" and how the approaches and methods of Service Design and User-Centred design might be applied to designing data that isn't encapsulated into a user interface. Quite often people in the world of Service Design come from backgrounds that aren't particularly technical. The … Continue reading Data consumption

Back in the early 2000s when I was working at the BBC I was starting to have to write a whole series of "Requests for Proposals" - documents outlining a particular need that we were looking for a supplier to fill. Being a diligent sort, I wanted to find a course to go on to … Continue reading On the other side

Back in the mid-2010s, I spent some time working on a project in the Government Digital Service GDS. The project is lost in history, but part of what I needed to do at the time was to create a taxonomy to help understand the otherwise very nebulous concept of "Government". For some time it's been … Continue reading Understanding Government

When was the last time software made you smile? If you are anything like me, it's probably easier to recall when it made you grimace. The ten minutes this morning, for example, that I spent trying to get my headphones to talk to my phone (Cambridge Audio: lovely hardware, ropey software). Or the labyrinth of … Continue reading Software to make you smile

This week I have learned: saying goodbye is hard. Especially when one has been part of a team that has become as strong and as open and as trusting as the Technology & Transformation team at RHP. I will miss them all, but the time is right for a change for me and for them.being … Continue reading Weeknote 585 – goodbye

This week I have learned: Assumptions based on thin evidence are easy to make and potentially fatal. Whether it's assuming experience because of the role that someone is in, or lacking context that explains otherwise inexplicable behaviours, we do it all of the time. Generalising is how we make sense of the world. Yet it's … Continue reading Weeknote 584: scaling back

This week I have learned: the challenges of unpacking thingsintersectionality can raise the hackles in unexpected placesthat in-person events are probably better overall than online ones... but if you promise me breakfast, I need breakfast!that in-person makes family diary management soooo much harderthat an increasing number of "last times" starts to get emotionalthat there are … Continue reading Weeknote 582: decoupling