Weeknote 7, 19–23 April 2021
Strategic thinking, smallest next best thing and setting things in motion
Things I’m happy about
Information services
A great step forward this week in our approach to information services (also known as non-transactional services to many, though I don’t like defining things by what they aren’t). A few key people from GDS and DfE had a great discussion about the ‘smallest best thing’ we could do here, keeping in mind that this problem isn’t a new one. It reminded me of the skateboard as MVP for a car (skateboards on my mind as my son is trying VERY hard to learn to ride…)
Also hearing DWP and HRMC are doing some good stuff in this space. Hoping this is the start of some great collaborative working.
HoP show and tell
The Heads of Profession had their first ‘show and tell’ across DfE. Our HoP group is a fantastic one. It’s great to feel like you’re a part of a multi-disciplinary team, even when you’re not doing day-to-day delivery. Our HoP group is Sophie Boyd (UR) Emily Swanson (DM), Sally McBeth (PM), Lewis Wilson (Software), Jas Kang (Service and Interaction Design) and Luke Slowen (Architecture). We went through our joint roadmap (which pulls in all the cross-cutting things from our profession roadmap as well as the wider capability roadmap) and our in-progress work. We also gave a shout out to the cross-disciplinary pair writing workshop I’m running on 6 May (which I’ll tell you more about then).
Design assessors
Half the time things I’m happy about aren’t things I’ve done but things I’ve set in motion. Design assessors are one of those things. I’m desperate for our assurance process to include design assessors, but it’s easier said than done! So this week I set up a workshop for a cross-design group of people to come together:
- Recap the problem space and why we need design assessors
- Build a shared understanding of what a design assessor at DfE needs to cover from an interaction, content and service design perspective
- Create a draft checklist of what we need to review at each stage and if available review this against the checklists for the other assessors, particularly the user research ones
- Test/review our levels of confidence assessing items on the checklist that aren’t in our specialism and plan to address any capability gaps
- Discuss how we need to share our initial findings and to whom and how we want to iterate
Things that I learned
Innovation fellows
I really enjoyed being on the panel for lightning talks for the applicants to the №10 Innovation Fellowships. They had 10 minutes to talk about how they personally addressed diversity and inclusion in one of their previous roles. What really struck me was the wide range of ways people interpreted that question and what diversity and inclusion could mean. And there were a few that really impressed me in terms of nuance.
Go deep first, then resurface and look across
I’ve been reflecting on my first five months here at DfE. Looking back, I think what’s helped me the most in my Head of Profession role was initially embedding within a single delivery programme (in this case, the team looking at teacher continuing professional development). I have learned so much about how DfE operates and its constraints by being the Lead UCD across that programme. It might seem counterintuitive, but it works (a bit like how to do an Olly on a skateboard… ok, enough!)
Things I read that I liked
Our fearless Director Emma Stace published the DfE Digital and Technology strategy:
Being able to point to our direction of travel is SUPER, and I’m really pleased we have it. A few of my favourite snippets:
- user-centred thinking, over short-term cost efficiency.
- building successful communities of practice
- multidisciplinary approach to governance
One of the next best things we can do with the strategy now is define those key metrics. How will we know if we’re doing each of those things — Respond to the needs of children and learners, Run the business, Raise the bar, Reduce the burden? That was one of the most powerful things about Kitterati’s Greenwich strategy that Emma pointed to.
Things I’m doing next week
The inaugural DfE UCD community meet-up! So much work has been done to prepare for this, especially by Alex Rippon, our tireless Community Manager. (And the prep for it has been oh-so UCD — four reps, one from each discipline have done brilliant work to get an activity that will help us achieve something special for us as a group).
Observing some research! It’s been 4 weeks and that’s too long. I love that these week notes have helped keep me accountable here.
