Thinking about user stories and how to talk about them as boundary objects.
Work
Projects
Writing
Reading
Health
How effective are case studies as a marketing/lead tool? I wonder if anyone has done any service design around how best to make use of them.
Need to add partnerships and a bit more on research to my mental model.
Watched a video about burnout. Makes some sense.
Read a report on system-shifting design. And thought a bit about whether I should focus on system-shifting product management instead of the responsibility stuff (not that I really work on either at the moment).
Also read an article about the low adoption of AI tools in businesses. Not surprising.
Shift the system, change the behavior. Change the behavior, shift the system.
Internal change is too ad hoc, it lacks rigour. We recognise a problem, want to do something about it, and get tied up in knots with all the possibilities. Any changes we do try aren’t treated as experiments, they don’t have a hypothesis about what we expect to see or measures to tell us if it worked. And so, more often than not, the change doesn’t really work and we go back around.
Also, internal change is a safe place to be. If it doesn’t get results, there aren’t really any consequences.
Had a chat about how I can come across as negative. I don’t mean to. I don’t think I’m naturally a negative person but my autistic brain does leap to analysing and critiquing things to try to understand how they work and fit together. I get that that means I come across as negative. Not really sure what to do about that other than keep quiet.
Mapped some more of my mental model for product management.
Read lots of now pages. I think there should be a social media-style site where to sign-up you have to have a website/blog with RSS and the only way to post on the site is to publish on your blog.
Read a bit of The Joy of Agility. The chapter on team alignment is interesting.
Need to add a couple of things to my mental model around feature flags for different user types and dog food accounts for product testing. Also NPD process metrics, team health metrics and individual joy.
Did my expenses for February.
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
L.P. Hartley
Listened to the All In The Mind podcast about communication skills. Got to reflect on how to use the insights.
Thought about personal OKRs. It occurred to me there’s lots of info about trying to apply OKRs but not many examples of where they’ve succeeded. Maybe that’s telling.
Did some more mind mapping for my new role. I’m considering getting some coaching to help me improve how I approach my first three months.
Saw in my site analytics traffic from aboutideasnow.com. Looks like a really interesting project.
Watched 8 mile. I don’t get it.
Started reading Empowered.
Been thinking about energy, how our brains are just metabolism regulators, and how we can use this in product design.
Our attention goes towards things that give us energy. Biologically, that means high calorie food, and emotionally it means things that are exciting and positive.
When it comes to expending energy, we go for the easiest, most energy efficient way.
So, product design should look enticing and be easy.
Got rid of more stuff (some to charity, some thrown away) as I become more minimalist.
Read some more of BVSSH. I don’t think I’ll get it finished my the end of the month but it’s progress towards my target. I’m going to try to read four books and complete six courses.
Redesigned my home page a bit.
Completed the GitLab TeamOps Foundations course.
Played with Gitbook for documentation.
What an interesting day of polar opposites.
Dave Briggs shared his slides on good decision making. I’m normally in complete agreement with Dave, and there’s lots of really good stuff in there… until the approach. I know it’s just an example and context specific, but the idea of treating digital like an IT service desk that is triaging tickets fills me with dread. Better for digital to a strategic partner, be such a part of what everyone does that it’s involved from the start. So many problems occur when digital is looked at as ‘the implementers’ of work that achieves other people’s objectives.
Thought a bit more about ‘just enough’ and ‘good enough’ approaches instead aiming for ‘best’ or even ‘good.