Category: Daynotes

A shower thought led me to connect my objectives to my task tracking. I have four objectives, and it occurred to me that each of the fifteen or so things I work on relate to one of my objectives. So, by counting how many tasks I’ve done for against each objective, I can show how much I’m focused on each objective.

I wrote a quick product overview document for a new product. It’s very basic stuff purely with the goal of getting everyone aligned, but so important.

I’m starting to realise a bit more what it means to be doing three people’s jobs. Probably going to need to think about how I manage my workload over the next couple of months.

Picked up a potential new tool that we may turn into a new product. Definitely need to think more about how we create a strategy for all of our products.

Did a little workshop with the team about using AI in our everyday work. It didn’t go as smoothly as I’d have liked, but it was short notice.

Did a bit more prep for presenting how we manage a new product that’s going live soon.

I changed my mind about real-time dashboards. Sometimes, if the data behind the dashboard isn’t going to change and the questions the dashboard is to answer are known in advance, then a static document is a better way to present the data.

Thought a bit about onboarding a new product, how it becomes part of a possible future suite of products, and how we build an operational model around it.

Reviewed some assumptions mapping and framed them into four propositions to pilot. The two-by-two allows us to test against two audiences and two channels and figure out which gives the best results.

I read Robin Berjon’s The Internet Transition.

It’s October. And it’s t-shirt weather. People are sleeping with their windows open.

Thought about allowing failure and creating learning opportunities. The breadth of failures is far wider than those that can offer learning opportunities. If the failure is small and has low consequences, then no one bothers to learn from it. If the failure is big and has catastrophic consequences, then it’s hard to learn from because of fear and panic. So, the failures that offer the best learning opportunities are those in the middle. They are the ones that are serious enough to take notice of but not so bad that they cause a lot of panic.

The question for me, is how I help ensure the failures I see coming land in that middle ground.

I’ve been working on a blog about how product management can exist in an organisation in different ways; with product managers, subject matter experts acting as product owners, and distributed across many different roles. Partly, it’s a reflection on the changes we’re making at work, and partly it’s a theoretical exercise to figure out where product responsibilities could sit.

Today was my second busiest day since I started tracking my tasks at the beginning of August. That’s what I get for taking a day off.

Did lots of fairly small things today across lots of different pieces of work, but the big(ish) thing was a research plan for donations. It’s been a while since I’ve done any user interviews so it’s been really interesting to work through the secondary research that’s out there about charity donations, and use it to frame the research objectives.

Thought a lot about change today. If looking back, life happens in chapters, I wonder if the next step is part of the same chapter or a new chapter?

Had some interesting meetings. A retro that shows real promise of non-digital teams adopting agile ways of working. And a sales client meeting which gave a small insight into validating a customer need.

Thought about how much good work never reaches full value because it lacks a good roll-out plan. Maybe if, rather than starting with direction-setting or discovery work, we started with distribution and only once we’re happy with that worked backwards.

Watched some videos on autism, but even though some were only a few years old, they mostly expressed outdated thinking. I still can’t find anything about being an autistic manager.

Wrote a blog post about how introducing a new method is the easy bit, changing the environment to make the method a success is the hard bit, but systems maps can help.

Watched some videos on teaming and psychological safety.

Worked on product strategy for our top 5 products. Still struggling to communicate how important managing work in progress is.

Listened to Matt Jukes on the Tao of WAO podcast.

Thought about a taxonomy for meetings, and whether ‘agenda’ is part of a ‘meeting’ or whether ‘agenda’ (the purpose of the meeting, not the list of things to talk about) is the bigger thing and ‘meeting’ is subordinate to it. Then, ‘chat’ or ‘document’ could also be similar objects all within ‘agenda’.