Weeknotes #153 — Return of the commute

A busy week, broken up by my first day in the office of 2022. Officially we restart our ‘hybrid working’ pilot from next week, but the office has been open throughout the latest restrictions for anyone that wants to use it. I missed my morning exercise, but made up for it by walking to and from the office instead of using the tube, a 40 minute journey each way.

It feels that this is going to be the year of getting on with things. My boss took his first business flight in almost two years, which is a real return to previous times. Through some combination of optimism and fatigue we seem to be reaching the point where ‘the new normal’ is almost here. Masks seem to be on their way out, but I’m going to keep wearing mine on the train and in other enclosed spaces.

The start of the week seemed stressful; I woke up at around 2:30am on Monday and 4:30am on Tuesday with lots on my mind. Usually I fall asleep super quickly and sleep right through to my alarm. By Wednesday things felt back on track.

This was a week in which I:

• Updated our budget and financial forecast to classify our work into ‘operations’, ‘projects’ and ‘products’. I also put together some draft materials on how we distinguish the different types of work and our approaches to them. Things seem to be crystallising around these ideas and things are falling into place.
• Spent a lot of time chasing up outstanding work on our various in-flight projects. I’m pushing things quite hard this year as I am keen to meet our planned roadmap dates in the first two quarters. We have some work we want to complete by the middle of the year to avoid renewing support agreements and licences for legacy technology. One day lost on a piece of work can have a knock-on effect to a number of other projects, so it’s important that everyone is pushing to get tasks done as quickly as possible.
• Reorganised our team’s Kanban board to ensure that anything we have committed to delivering in Q1 is clearly signposted, as well as items that are on the critical path for committed deliveries later in the year.
• Took part in the successful test of a configuration change that allows us to join Zoom meetings from our Teams-enabled meeting rooms.
• Got one of our Raspberry Pis up and running in our office as we try out a new digital signage solution. I want to leave it running there over a number of days and weeks to see how it performs over time. A new metal case with a heat-sink seems to have improved the temperature and performance of the Pi and it’s all running well so far.

• Met with our telephony migration vendor to review our comments on their detailed statement of work, and agreed next steps.
• Attended a meeting for our big group programme where I learned that the way in which the pipeline of work will be organised and managed is being realigned.
• Took part in a reference call for a vendor which we are thinking of using to help us with our annual conference. It’s amazing that people are are happy to give up their time to talk about their experience with a vendor, and so valuable in terms of getting some real-world insight.
• Decided to skip a couple of meetings where I was likely to be purely an audience member and I knew that the sessions would be recorded. I skim-watched the meetings later and took some notes and screenshots for the wider team, which felt like a much better use of time.
• Attended a superb ‘learning hour’ session, where one of my colleagues gave a presentation on how technology has massively improved the quality of life for her family. She has a young son who is diabetic, and they use a number of different tools to monitor his blood sugar level, automatically administer insulin and monitor his health over time, all via Internet of Things-connected devices. The whole talk was completely fascinating.
• Had a lovely ‘random coffee’ with a colleague that I hadn’t spoken to in some time.
• Met with a small group of fellow WB-40 podcast listeners to discuss how product thinking can be applied to internal products, and physical infrastructure. We didn’t reach any profound conclusions, but it was great to talk the problems and goals through. The WB-40 community is such a wonderful thing to be a part of.
• Took up the role of Finance, Premises and Personnel Committee Chair at school once again and ran our latest meeting. I have some carry-forward actions that I still need to complete over the coming weeks.
• Attended another excellent briefing from Herts for Learning, this time on the school curriculum and the role that governors have to play. As usual, there is so much to think about.
• Had a great time at Album Club #131, listening to El Camino by The Black Keys. Lots of the club members had heard it before but it was completely new to me. It was a classic Album Club evening, with lots of laughs, great music and very generous hosting.
• Took a trip with Mat to Deco Audio in Aylesbury to buy some second hand records. It was just like our teenage years, when we used to head to The Rock Box in Camberley to browse the CDs. Compared to back then, it’s great that I can now afford to buy more albums, but there was something about really thinking hard about a purchase and squeezing the joy out of the few that I owned that is now a little lost.
• Enjoyed the mild temperatures on our Saturday morning cycling club ride. The previous couple had been cancelled due to freezing temperatures so it was great to get out again.
• Got out for a run for the first time since Christmas. It felt like a more efficient use of time than spending 90 minutes on the indoor bike trainer. I’m not looking forward to having stiff legs tomorrow.
• Ran the line at my eldest son’s football match. A brilliant 3-0 win for them on a stunning astro pitch.
• Watched season one of After Life. I don’t think Ricky Gervais is the world’s greatest actor, but the story had some interesting angles which made me laugh out loud multiple times and was also moving in places. I’ll definitely line up season two.

Next week: Back to the office more than once, pushing forward with our burgeoning project portfolio and preparing for our next school governor meeting in a couple of weeks’ time.