{"id":4943,"date":"2018-12-04T00:30:05","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T00:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=4943"},"modified":"2018-12-04T00:30:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T00:30:05","slug":"weeknotes-4546-extravaganza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2018\/12\/04\/weeknotes-4546-extravaganza\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknotes #45\u201346 \u2014 Extravaganza"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent the last week suffering with a severe eye-watering, nose-blockaded man-cold. The second in a month. It\u2019s left me feeling exhausted in the evenings and craving little except sleep. No sympathy required \u2014 it\u2019s on the wane now and I\u2019m glad that I no longer feel like I am wading through molasses.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re behind schedule on our programme. Some key documentation is overdue and people will now start to drift away on their summer holidays in the Southern Hemisphere. I am hopeful that ultimately it will make little difference as there are still a lot of other paths of work running in parallel, but I am keeping in mind that every task<\/em> is on the critical path if it becomes late enough.<\/p>\n

My role in keeping things going is currently turning into one of chasing people up for things \u2014 documents, plans, legal agreements. The analogy that keeps coming to mind is that of someone who is moving house and has to keep on top of their solicitor so that the days don\u2019t just tick by.<\/p>\n

We have a key team member leaving us at the end of this month and given how long it takes for a recruitment process to run I am likely to have to pick up the project management aspects of his work in order to try and keep the programme on track. A big part of the next couple of months will be just working harder and longer to get through this additional work. He\u2019ll leave a big hole in the team which will be difficult to fill in the short term.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m making progress with helping the team to show their work but this is still ripening and hasn\u2019t yet come to full fruition. We\u2019re getting better and I can see that some things are starting to click. I spent some time with a couple of our workstream managers, explaining how to use a burn down chart<\/a> to visualise the planned work and to reflect whether we are on track. We have a workshop on Monday where I am hoping that it everyone will come away with an improved understanding of how the whole programme hangs together. As well as looking at our milestone map I am trying to get in the habit of keeping all of the agreed actions front and center each day so that we make sure we are following up on the things we said we would do. It\u2019s more effort on my part but I am hoping that it will be worth it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been interesting to see how people shy away from conflict, and it is a good reminder that part of my role is to make sure we focus on areas of disagreement between people in the team and make sure that we resolve things quickly. People may agree to something in a meeting, either having thought that they heard something else or deciding that agreeing is the quickest route out of the current conversation, deliberately pushing it down the road. It\u2019s painful when it comes home to roost days and weeks later. So much of work is about the people, not the processes.<\/p>\n

Security is so hard, and I am sure it will keep people like Troy Hunt<\/a> busy for the rest of their lives. There are lots of technical challenges out there but we don\u2019t even have the basics right. I am sure that hardly anyone in the general population uses a password manager. Sometimes I come across processes where people send passwords via email and struggle to find the energy to explain why this should never<\/em> be done. On Sunday I came across this in the \u2018stocking filler\u2019 section of John Lewis and held my head in my hands:<\/p>\n

\"Nothing

Nothing says \u2018Happy Christmas\u2019 more than a book of your very own security vulnerabilities.<\/p><\/div>\n

I have also fallen victim to somebody (accidentally, I guess?) using my email address for their eBay account. I\u2019m getting to see their bids, purchases, name and address. I am sure that this is a GDPR issue but I can\u2019t for the life of me find where or how to report it.<\/p>\n

Somehow over the past couple of weeks I managed to serendipitously schedule my nights out around my periods of illness. Our babysitter has been clocking up some serious hours at our house and the boys have been getting very used to her being here. We\u2019ve had some great meals with friends; it felt like we hadn\u2019t socialised in a long time and it\u2019s been so lovely to be out with everyone again. I also managed to meet up with a lot of old friends from UBS<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup>, where I was first employed as a graduate almost 20 years ago. We\u2019re all older, a little wiser, and lots has changed in our lives but it\u2019s so funny how we\u2019re all still largely the same.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My brothers, our wives and I all went to see The Queen Extravaganza<\/a> \u2014 the \u2018official tribute act<\/a>\u2019 \u2014 at the Hammersmith Apollo. I\u2019d booked the tickets on Christmas Day last year as I was gushing to them about the lead singer Marc Martel\u2019s amazing voice. Here\u2019s the video he used to audition to Roger Taylor, who was assembling the band, along with a completely mind-blowing rendition of The Prophet\u2019s Song:<\/p>\n