It’s been quite here, as quite as it is in the small forest hut I am writing these right now.

Once again I got swept away by other things that occupied my mind. A new year, one fourth of it passed by already. So no better time to restart this once again. Doing weeknotes - Giles Turnbull (GDS legend) did a wonderful write-up on why this is such a valuable tool that supports your company, team and you to do great (product) work, not only in the public sector. Thanks to Martin for the pointer and motivating me once again to set some time apart for this. Let’s hope it will stick!

Reflecting on my weeknotes

Quick reflection. I have so far written a total of 39 somehow “public” weeknotes over the last three years.

  • 22 are hidden behind a company wall
    • the policy of my former employer did not allow publishing these openly
    • still useful for reflection and being transparent about challenges
    • shared them internally via e-mail, later by editing a sharepoint page
    • got valuable feedback and great conversations as return
  • 17 (and counting) can be found here, on my personal blog beliebig.eu/weeknotes/
    • public money - public code & to be open by default as a company value, therefore weeknotes are possible, thank you DigitalService
    • used them various times to look back on decisions or thoughts - external memory
    • writing them means reflecting and challenging my (or my teams) decisions and thoughts - thinking out loud
  • I changed the layout and guiding questions multiple times:
    • started without any structure - always got lost in procrastination
    • created a recurring structure, iteration 1 - no focus
      • what happened
      • started
      • left me with puzzles
    • slightly different questions, iteration 2 - love the links and the focus, the rest still feels like too much burden
      • focus of the week
      • happened this week
      • what’s next
      • interesting links
    • moving towards reflecting on a single topic, iteration 3 - too much preparation and writing time
    • iteration 4: bullet points - my thought, this might speed up the writing and I know me if I get excited I still will take time to elaborate the (what I think) interesting stuff…

The fourth iteration - bullet points

  • we build and tested a Figma prototype of an early, digital, eligibility check
    • it can be used by policy-makers to understand if they need to work on the digital-readiness of their policy
    • tested it virtually
    • six participants
    • once again, a small decision support system turns out to help the users get into the mood of thinking about digital readiness of their laws
    • learned some Figma along the way, as our designer Lena got sick
    • Now once again debating in my head if Figma is a time hog or actually useful (in comparison to just building a basic HTML / CSS prototype)
    • started the synthesis using the atomic research model
  • sorted through feedback for a new version of the Digitalcheck documents
  • DigitalService got a new level and salary system, many thoughts. But I learned not to get too excited about this stuff. There is a lot of talk, and in the end we will see how this will impact the competitiveness of our salaries and the appreciation that comes with levels and salary.
  • Reflected with my people lead about the new allocation of work during the parental leave of our team lead.
  • Talked to Martin about why, in Lena’s and my opinion, it would be a good thing to market/apply the Servicestandard to subsidiary governmental agencies