November 19th, 2021
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Kevin’s notes
This was a good/busy/fragmented week for me, which upon reflection is actually the persistent tone and tenor of the role. I said to a few people this week: I don’t actually miss being a practitioner all that much. There are designers who are much more skilled at UX/UI then I (although I do still fancy myself a crack researcher), and they are better positioned to deliver high quality outputs in the projects. I deeply enjoy the strategic design challenge of the work — that is, creating the organizational conditions for success, broadly defined. It’s a lot of grey matter manipulation and systems thinking, and I love it. So to be pulled in different directions and context switch constantly throughout the day, so it goes, lean right in.
- I met with Compliance and Enforcement stakeholders throughout the week piecing together the team and approach for business case generation. I’m involved to advise on the design aspects, of which the problem space is ripe for a deep dive into discovery across all use cases/groups, and should make for fascinating work.
- I looped in with the Parks UX team on a few occasions, as the delivery landscape shifts in the suite of interconnected projects. Regardless of where the team applies its talents, the outputs are of a high quality and the velocity is high. Special shoutout to Harry Olson who’s skills as a full-stack designer continue to impress week after week.
- bcparks.ca retro: Jill says more about it below, so I’ll keep it brief. It was a constructive process but also a tough session. We truly believe in a blameless culture and shared accountability, and I think we’ve been piecing the learnings together from this scope in a way which creates transparent lessons for future gov/vendor partnerships, to avoid our pitfalls and build on our wins.
- EPD design discovery rolls along, with a solid cadence and a clear workback from the end of the vendor contract. Great work in progress by the Disco crew in partnership with Kyle/Karen gov side!
- I met with Sarah Poole from CITZ to review a gov-wide survey her team is working on to gauge/measure design familiarity/competency. Looking forward to learning what data this captures and where it positions our organizational maturity vis a vis designerly ways of doing/knowing. I’ve been feeling lately like gov has made great strides integrating design processes into our traditional workstreams with many more folks friendly to its methods than in years past. It’ll be nice to have some quant to back up these signals.
- CleanBC! We kicked off a new phase of work with partners from across gov on this hot topic / political priority. Unsure what exactly I can say about this initiative at present, so I’ll clear it with the stakeholders before I reveal more. Climate action is my personal and professional north star, so to be involved with the coordinating effort across the org is deeply satisfying. More to come on this file.
- I had (separate) coffees with Marlieke Kieboom and Savannah Murphy. Marlieke is one of my all-time favourite colleagues and Savannah helped hire me for my first job at GDX. I have the utmost respect and admiration for them both and owe them much for my growth and trajectory. It’s important to me to make the time and space to connected in this busy life.
Jill and I also worked on our outline/narrative for the Public Sector Network BC presentation we’ll be giving on December 2nd: Innovators at Work: Partnering to Deliver Better Services. This should be a fun and useful event, to all my public sector folk out there (regardless of jurisdiction), hope to see you on the other side of the screen!
Much love to everyone in the province dealing with the aftermath of the flooding events this week. Three states of emergency in BC in 2021, from heatwaves to floods in less than 4 months. This is the experience of climate crisis, and the catalyst of our collective the meta project to adapt to a new paradigm while still mitigating its worst effects.
Jill’s notes
A picture of our collective brain this week:
Despite the jumble, we are at an exciting time in our Service Transformation journey here at ENV. The team of teams at BC Parks is starting to gel and perform — something that is often a challenging journey regardless of talent. We’ve had excellent executive support and are beginning to solidify permanent roles within the branch. Our next adventure is shiting our mental space into the unification of the CleanBC digital experience. On that, most of my week has been one on one meetings getting up to speed as we ramp back up. Beyond that, a few happenings this week:
- The soil relocation work continues to truck along. I’m proud of how we’ve come together to agree on a simple and scalable solution that will allow us to learn more about who and how these forms will be used. As always, regulation is being constructed as we build a tool, so our goal is to find something that will meet the need and be robust but not overbuilt. Once we know whether it’s 10 or 1000 people accessing the service, we can scope and plan accordingly.
- I reconnected with Rachel Greenspan in CITZ, and we quickly realized we had some shared needs re: granting software. She’s looped me into the excellent work to stitch this need with Greg Froh and the common components team. It’s incredibly encouraging to meet with like-minded humans who are keen to grow our community, make better services, and reduce taxpayer dollars spent on the same things. Lindsay MacFarlane, the Product Owner for the CAS team, is also stitched in here. They have a similar solution in flight.
- I reconnected with Jill Adams, very excited to see her work on a digital skills inventory in the Justice sector and how we could apply it across the governments.
- We had our BCParks.ca CMS retro. It was tough. There was a lot of content, and it would have been great to go a bit deeper on some of the issues. My takeaway is that stopping a project and exercising the escalation path is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength—no matter who initiates it. Oh, and scope changes happen, and they always have an impact.
Finally, my heart goes out to all those struggling with flooding and its effects in BC. Proud of the way our communities are stepping up and putting health and safety at the forefront.
