After a lovely break in sunny Nelson, I got back to Wellington a little late with some delays across ferry services from Picton to Wellington. When I finally got on a crossing, I was reminded how wobbly my ‘sea legs’ are, hence spending a couple of hours on deck through a weirdly swelly sailing on what was a sunny, calm day. Anyway, back on terra firma and started back to work in earnest.

The Work/Mahi

A relatively short month primarily focused on:

• Refining our Technology Services strategy piece: bringing this to a state for presentation and feedback.
• Further rollout of a different delivery model, proposed and trialled by our new Delivery Manager.

Both are going really well, I’ve been working with our CTO to get that strategy piece refined to where we can break down into initiatives and associated objectives. Once that is done, I want to explore metrics around progress and success, be it framed by KPIs, OKRs, NCTs; I think it is important that we get consensus on this so we can use ourselves and project to others to clearly demonstrate value and impacts.

Relatedly, is the three squads model, breaking our delivery team up so it is more focused, committed to our critical services. It is a relatively small team, and we have new Product Owners in the mix, with great product experience, so I feel we should dedicate talent to work with those POs in order to deliver better outcomes for our users.

Early days, but I am mightily impressed with initial dynamics - far less muddled and ‘agile theatre’ than before; more purposeful and promising teams, and from initial feedback the teams are really enjoying the new set-up, which is really positive.

The Rest

Short month and not much done in terms of finding new stuff on the internet that enlightens, inspires!! I guess we all need a month off. But did like this post on accessibility and SEO; I used to present to start-ups in Belfast on this very thing almost two decades ago ….interesting to see some things resonate still!

In real life, been chipping away at staining some new decking and structures around the house. Through this, I have realized how poor I am at estimating!…I thought it would take a long weekend - yet here I am 3 weeks later about 70% of the way through!

The Play

• Really enjoying the new David Gray album. Good to pick back up on him after a wee while, having seen him on the White Ladder tour in Wellington a couple of years ago where he was v good.
• I’m revisiting old Stina Nordenstam albums - having had them pop up in random playlists, revisiting how eclectically good she was/is :)
• Began to read The Nazi Mind by Laurence Rees; good knowledge, worryingly resonant today.

Sin e an scéal (that’s the story)😀.

Laters.