Haven’t been publishing notes over a year feels bad. I have a couple of drafts in my document, but never took the time to publish them. And then life just happened, and I prioritized other things. So let’s try to ease back into it. I will add a three-year reflection on my time at DigitalService later, hopefully.

For now, you need to know:

  • I still love to do product management and reflect on it,
  • I still enable digital-ready policy drafting,
  • I am still part of a lovely and driven team that:

What happened this week

  • Digital-readiness connected:
    • Had the all team sprint planning. It was the first time with the fully staffed team, it humbled me to see 14 people (team and administration) in the meeting. What a growth from starting out alone in 2022.
    • Lena, one of my team’s service designers, visited Berlin - so we could work together in one room, cake was also involved.
    • Put in some time to finish up work on the new iteration of the five principles of digital-ready policy. They come together nicely - I really enjoyed all the discussions and working sessions with Lena and Hendrik. Excited to see them put into practice, soon! For now, you can find the old ones here.
    • Did a good old whiteboard session with Sarah to align on the roll-out options of the new principles for digital-readiness. We discussed balancing speed and cohesion across our touchpoints. Quite pleased with the solution we came up with. Now excited to put it into practice.
      • Worked backwards with the team to analyze how we get this delivered.
      • Informed and created buy-in with our stakeholders in the government, while already drafting up some communication material.
    • Spent time with Dirk, a new designer on the team, to get him up to speed with the interoperability act and what it entails for our work.
  • Miscellaneous work things
    • Got a new, but used, MacBook Air after my old one had a bit too much coffee. Happy about how easy the set-up was, as all our work is happening in the cloud. Upset, that I added stickers, only to find out that it also has a hardware issue.
    • Had an assessment conversation with my people lead. I was humbled by the positive feedback he collected. Especially appreciated, everything team-health/energy/leadership connected. I strive to create an environment that enables each individual to grow and love to work in, thankful that it is noticed!
    • Spent an efficient 30minutes with Joshua on our PDF LLM side project, drafting a presentation about how we used AI to enable us to validate hypothesis fast. Drafted our takeaways, looking forward to the discussion:
      • LLMs as Components, not Panaceas: LLMs are valuable for specific sub-tasks (e.g., summarizing text, classifying segments) but struggle with end-to-end complex tasks (e.g. PDF extraction).
      • Python as the Orchestrator & Execution Environment: Python, with its rich ecosystem of libraries, algorithmic capabilities, logical execution is (so far?) crucial for success.
      • The Human Element is Irreplaceable: Algorithmic thinking, domain expertise, iterative refinement, and critical evaluation remain paramount.
      • Iterative Development is Key: Expect a non-linear process involving trial, error, and continuous learning.
  • Other things:
    • Took some time to update this tiny web page this week, adding a talks&writing section, still need to add slides and material. But it is a start, yay!
    • Had another epic day on the road bike. Surfing the wind, together with friends, from Rostock to Berlin. Lovely landscape, but I was dressed too lightly, it got cold!
    • Caught up on some bike maintenance on my “fast commuter” - was once again frustrated with the quality of the wheels. Might need to sell and upgrade it.

Next weeks priorities:

  1. Delivering on our roll-out plan for the refactored five principles for digital-ready policy. I will spare and help with the stakeholder alignment.
  2. Thinking ahead to shape the midterm roadmap, I really want to deliver another scalable feature to our target group (policymakers).
  3. Setting apart some time to help drafting communication material aimed at the new senior officials in the newly created digital ministry.
  4. Continue onboarding Dirk, handing over more and more responsibilities as we move forward.