Light - 22 to 26 June
It’s the end of our 4-week cycle, and what have we done?
Like everyone in the UK, mostly this week was trying and failing to stay cool, so let’s keep this light.
Good progress on the next batch of content updates, even if we’re not where we’d ideally like to be. I must have said ‘as usual, when you actually start the work, you find out how much work there is’ quite a lot this week. I’m confident we’ll get there with most things, but I have set expectations for possibly shifting some things to the next update.
Kicked off the work to describe a new role of ‘information architect’ in the framework with the group of proposers. Cue plenty of meta-existential discussions about the information architecture of the current skills taxonomy so we can decide the skills required by an information architect - what is a skill, anyway?
Presented at our monthly governance council of capability leads. Positive reception to the concept of open backlogs for upcoming proposals and content changes, and got some volunteers for testing. Looking good to get these in place during July’s sprint.
Worked out what we’re each doing in our firebreak next week. With my fellow content designer we are going to explore and test what the concept of ‘more interaction’ could mean for framework content. This should help us as we prepare for a potential re-platform of the site coming soon.
Linked to this, some thinking spurred by a post from Ash Mann. The framework does ‘warehouse’ pretty well for those who need that (could be better). How well do we do the ‘showroom’ for those who might benefit from some help to ‘find their way in’ and understand the value?
Next week
Firebreak week - have tried to block out at least half of each day for this so will be interesting to see what we manage to do in practice.
Other things
Re-finished Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time. Obviously re-loved it. I think this might have been one of the first of his I ever read as an early teenager, so sometimes it was weirdly like taking a tour around my own younger head. Now there’s also a wry smile at the all-knowing beings trying to organise everything perfectly, infuriated at humanity’s unpredictability and illogical culture.
I’ve added to the book-buying habit with a new mug-buying habit. Oops.
Planning for a holiday to Spain in July!
Reading and browsing
Mainly my copy of Bad Services by Lou Downe, plus the accompanying Bad Services Corp website.
Systems thinking for Civil Servants
What Ikea stores could teach us about framing value - Ash Mann