Weeknotes May 14th 2021
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill are publishing weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Kevin’s notes:
Might this be my last week of intensive focus on bcparks.ca? I’m feeling quite positive as I look to roll back my involvement and pivot to other priorities in the ministry. In brief this week:
- Recruitment: I anticipated this to be a chunk of work, and yet it somehow managed to exceed expectations in terms of time and involvement. We’ve leveraged organic connections through outdoor recreation organizations, the Parks volunteer list, and finally, some direct outreach through personal networks. But we’re where we need to be in terms of numbers and a baseline of diverse participants, broadly defined. For this project, it means geography, age, gender, experience, and ability (diverse participation in research merits its own post someday soon). To reiterate: 100% worth the effort.
- The information architecture scope with OXD is well underway. Testing will be deployed next week, can’t wait to see the analysis of the findings! It was a pleasure iterating on the draft IA and test tasks with the team this week.
- Our product roadmap was finalized, formatted, vetted, and sent up to the Deputy for review. Thanks to the folks who contributed to getting that exec ready, and looking forward to DM feedback.
- Sprint review and planning: feeling more confident about our attention to detail and the interplay of component parts/accountabilities towards common goals and outcomes. Great work by the team in the daily comms, culminating in tighter planning and execution.
- PIA revisions are ongoing for both our technical and service design versions. I spent a couple of hours on the SD updates… properly in the weeds. I can’t say it’s the most exhilarating task but it’s a) required and b) worth the investment for its replicability across projects moving forward. Gov is a game of precedent and process — I wrote an in-depth piece about PIAs a couple of years ago, worth checking out if this falls within your purview.
A few other notes from the week:
- I attended the final workshop in this second round of vendor-led digital strategy sessions, this time with the Environmental Assessment Office. Great engagement from all in attendance, zooming from crunchy service challenges up through the connective (strategic) tissues and pathways forward.
- I worked on facilitation materials in preparation for a session with our colleagues at the Environmental Protection Division and beyond next week, diving into problem framing/definition for an interconnected set of services and processes. I’m excited to meet new people and learn about other parts of the ministry and establish the role and potential impact of design in tackling the challenges.
- Jill and I continued to brainstorm on how to best scale our team — what skills (roles) would be the best fit for where we’re at now, where (we think) we’re going, and who we serve. This is part and parcel with our branch definition and planning (re: last week’s notes): the core services we offer, differentiators, value proposition, etc.
Weekly musings
How to leave a legacy in project work? This is something I’ve been reflecting on with bcparks.ca, as much of my efforts have been in relative isolation. Which is fine, as the direct impacts on the project are tangible. However, much of the value of design processes led by outside forces (in my case, an inside/outside force) is the organizational learning and socialization of ways of working. In an ideal context, a couple of staff would have been collaborators on this journey, not to become ‘designers’ per-se, but rather witness the impact of human-centred design through first principals, good practice, and being hands-on in the doing.
In lieu of folks from the branch living the minutiae with me, how might I document this body of learning, in a way that’s intelligible, useful, and actionable? For recruitment, I could compile a compendium of [annonymized] emails to showcase the comms crafting, relationship building, and advancement of the process in a way that’s both sensitive to the informational needs of your potential recruits and expedient to the needs of the project. For the synthesis of design as a foundational consideration and a legible practice to be planned and executed, what’s the content? I’m as yet unsure — is it another slide deck and presentation? I don’t think simply being told about the value of design processes (by a designer) is the most impactful delivery mechanism. Second-hand experience doesn’t create the same epistemological shift as participation; if anyone out there has ideas in this department I’d love to chat.
Two things that caught my eye:
FWDThinking Episode 9: Legacy modernization. Farming, not weeding: Changing our mental model of Legacy systems. Super interesting conversation amongst experienced practitioners, including my former boss/mentor Gordon Ross. I’m especially keen on “how to break a monolithic system into components that can be upgraded, changed, and re-used independently of one another, so we can innovate in parallel.”
And this piece from BBC Futures: The myths that hint at past disasters. Myths and fables passed down over thousands of years are full of fantastic creatures and warring gods. But they also might contain evidence of environmental disasters of the past. As I wind down coursework in my masters, I’m currently studying the sticky topic of ethics construction vis a vis environmental values and practice. Myths, normative narratives, worldviews — To quote Thomas King, “the truth about stories is, that’s all we are.”
Finally, a moment of gratitude for long spring evenings, motivated climbing partners, and lush valleys close to home; nice to get out for a handful of pitches after work, sharpening systems for bigger summer objectives!
Jill’s notes:
This week was packed with full-on action. I was proud and overjoyed to lead a cross-function, cross-ministry mega-team of over 50 people in our first annual Mega-thon! What is a Mega-thon you ask? Well, we don’t really know, but what we do know is that a big-old hackathon needed a much sexier name.
Why a Mega-thon you might ask?
We had three goals in mind:
- We want to encourage innovation and have a little fun;
- We want to give people adequate time and space to tackle challenging problems in a new program area; and,
- We want to help build relationships across teams to inspire new collaborations.
It was a breath of fresh air for our team — so glad we participated!
— Mega-thoner
Safe to say, mission accomplished.
A full debrief and even a promo video is in-flight. For now, a teaser. We had ten teams working on over 15 program area problems (of the well over 20 we had submitted). Over a dozen subject matter experts volunteered their time kicking off with a business problem buffet on Wednesday afternoon. The participants toured the problems with subject matter experts in Zoom breakout rooms and formed teams based on their interests.
The teams worked through Thursday and Friday morning finishing up with a solid 2 hours of rolling demos that maxed out at 92 people from across the government. The end result included some beautiful user interfaces, data modeling, dashboards, new ideas, automation, maps, and more. Did I mention this was a relatively organic, word-of-mouth trial event? We certainly missed interested people in this trial call and in the spirit of continuous improvement gathered feedback on how we can do better next time.
Gratitude nod
To my fellow organizers, Jesus, Katie, Jessica (who spent hours learning about new challenges), and Aaron — I couldn’t be happier to call you teammates (even if we aren’t on the same formal team).
To the Subject Matter Experts who dedicated their time. Appreciate it and we couldn’t have done it without you.
Weekly musings
In other news, the saga continues re: defining our service transformation journey at ENV. I was reminded to step back, define roles and responsibilities and revisit this with my colleagues. That’s next week / month / year / repeat.
- Alex Ritchie and I touched base in preparation for next week's BC Data Council meeting (I sit as co-chair) where we hope to garner support for a new model of committee involvement in the vital work happening on data strategy and governance.
- I also met with Amy Kirtay who is deep into learning about Digital Leadership (read just modern leadership and change management). She’s kindly volunteered to help me re-work our already sold-out June leadership curriculum and help facilitate.
- Spent some time with Jesus Hernandez Tapia fleshing out what is surely going to be a great discussion and storytelling exercise for the Business Agility Meetup Berlin. We’re going to discuss the path of starting, norming forming, storming, performing, and of course, learning as we built the Mines Digital Services cross-functional agile team over the last three years.
- Finally, originally recorded in October, Ari Hershberg (The Exchange) and I discuss how the experience of getting results will change an organization. You can listen to the podcast here.
And lastly, back by popular demand — here is Buoy — living his best life with his big sister Shark.
