Tales from my week. 20th — 26th August
Highlights
- Our design sprint concluded on Wednesday. I’m in awe of how my design and user research colleagues managed to construct and test prototypes in a matter of days, and collate wide-ranging and nuanced feedback.
- I was interviewed for a blog post on our intranet about why I’m proud to work for the civil service. Amongst the stress and deadlines of the last six months it was refreshing to step back and talk about why I came to the public sector, what motivates me, and the moments I’m most proud of.
- We’ve kept work moving while lots of colleagues have taken well-deserved summer breaks. I wrote our product owner a brief ‘catch up’ note this afternoon with the headline activities and decisions from the last two weeks, and was surprised how much there was to share.
- The UKGovcamp organisers met on Tuesday to discuss plans for 2023.
- One of my bandmates gave me a cutting from an aloe vera to propogate. My office is slowly filling up with plants which bring me a lot of joy.
- Today is International Dog Day, and therefore our Slack has been filled with adorable pet photos.
Challenges
- The context-switching has been baffling this week. On Thursday I bounced from an unexpected email about data security to a design sprint prototype evaluation session to my blog post interview, then back to design sprint findings, a handover meeting with our service manager and a brainstorm on potential bug fixes for our tech solution… It’s (mostly) great fun being a business analyst and having the opportunity to work across different elements of a service, but it can be exhausting when all those things are packed into one day.
- I’m not getting the balance right at the moment between work, family, band, other commitments and downtime. I’ve had a few headaches this week, which is a sure sign I need to find more space in my routine for alone time and rest.
The Week Ahead
- It’s a long weekend here in England, as Monday is a bank holiday (non-working day in most professions). I’ve consciously made no firm plans for the weekend.
- We have a team social on Wednesday after work. I can’t stay very long as I have other commitments in the evening, but nevertheless I’m looking forward to catching up with a few people.
- Band rehearsals step up in intensity next week as we’re two weeks away from the British Open contest.
- I’ve started some work on a data dashboard today. I’m hoping that looking at it with fresh eyes on Tuesday will highlight any silly errors and allow me to unpick some of the more finicky logic which has evaded me today.
