{"id":6097,"date":"2020-06-13T17:27:21","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T17:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=6097"},"modified":"2020-06-13T17:27:23","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T17:27:23","slug":"weeknotes-74-monthnotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2020\/06\/13\/weeknotes-74-monthnotes\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknotes #74 \u2014 Monthnotes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The weeks have turned into a month. It\u2019s hard to believe that it\u2019s almost been a quarter of a year since I went into the office. Life is so different now. The country seems to have moved into a weird phase where nobody seems to quite know what they should and shouldn\u2019t be doing. I\u2019m still keeping myself at home as much as I can \u2014 I have taken the car out for two short drives in three months, and haven\u2019t been inside a single shop in that time \u2014 but my wife has gone back to work at her school and our youngest boy just finished his first week back. TV, newspapers and social media are filled with images of people in groups, whether out socialising or at the many Black Lives Matter<\/em> protests, which seems to normalise being together again. The whole ridiculous Dominic Cummings affair seemed to be the turning point. I am guessing that a combination of the government messaging falling apart in order to save him, plus the length of time that people have been told to stay at home, has meant that the pressure in the system is now being let out. It\u2019s sometimes difficult to remember that there\u2019s still a pandemic out there, with infections and deaths still occurring. I\u2019ve bought some face masks in order to give me some protection when I do go out, and also to do my bit in trying to normalise wearing them<\/a>. I hope we don\u2019t see a resurgence of coronavirus cases in a couple of weeks\u2019 time, but I get the feeling that people are resigned to it.<\/p>\n

Work has been very intense over the past month. The adjustment to everyone working from home meant that our technology rollouts in S\u00e3o Paulo and Beijing have been delayed and are now taking place in parallel, with us driving the work remotely instead of being there in person. Added to that we have picked up more urgent projects to complete. I spend so much of my week in meetings that I find myself \u2018defensive-diarying\u2019 each Monday morning, blocking out any free time in the coming week so people think twice before adding more meetings in. I think it\u2019s always been like this, but I used to give myself focus time by staying late in the office until seven, eight or sometimes even ten o\u2019clock in order to get stuff done. We all get together as a family for dinner at six-thirty now, so that time has gone. I love being able to eat with the family every day, but I do struggle to carve out that time for \u2018deep work<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

I spent a good couple of weeks getting our portfolio of work in order. We have around 140 \u2018projects\u2019, of which we are executing around 25 or so \u2014 which is probably too many. The more I use LeanKit<\/a> the more I love it; the tool seems to let me do 90% of the things I need to in terms of \u2018seeing\u2019 and working with our entire portfolio. We now have our day-to-day tasks on one board, the portfolio on another, risks in a matrix in a different board and one more to manage a pipeline of internal talks that we hold each Wednesday. Having got things in order, I\u2019ve been turning my attention back to executing on the things we need to deliver. We have some very hard deadlines coming up, and it\u2019s going to be tough to meet them with everything being implemented in time.<\/p>\n

This past week we had a department meeting where our whole team were given the opportunity to reflect on the best and worst things of the past three months. It was interesting to hear everybody talk about things they don\u2019t normally get the opportunity to say. Despite being short of time, which I expect I will continue to feel until my time on this planet is up, I feel extremely lucky in so many ways. We\u2019re all well. We have a wonderful house and we each have space to work and focus away from the rest of the family, and can come together when we want to. I have a job that, for now at least, is not at immediate risk of going away. I can do my job completely from home. I don\u2019t feel as though we don\u2019t deserve to be happy right now, but I also appreciate that there is a lot of luck and circumstance involved in where we find ourselves. We have friends who have been furloughed, others who are going through a redundancy process and one old friend who has been given a horrible medical diagnosis. We really can\u2019t take anything for granted.<\/p>\n

I need to get back into the habit of writing these weeknotes, and blog posts, more regularly. I love getting things down but somehow I usually find myself at the end of a Sunday night, with everyone else already up in bed, and the start of the next week is just around the corner. I\u2019ve ready many types of weeknotes, but Ton Zijlstra\u2019s<\/a> look like the gold standard \u2014 a short, sharp summary of what\u2019s been going on and a few highlights to look back on.<\/p>\n

Some highlights from the past month:<\/p>\n