Things that happened this week (in no particular order, as I've got <30 minutes writing time):
- Monday was a rest day post-competition. We received a disappointing result at Nationals but we still had a really fun weekend.
- I wrote a blog post about career changing, and what's helped me navigate the move from BA to product. It's been half-drafted for ages, but I needed nudge to finish it, which arrived this week. It should be out on Monday.
- Lots and lots of testing ahead of 2x services launching next week. I'm quite the pedant (e.g. this week's corrections have included an incorrect capitalisation and a stray space) but I think that if the small details aren't right this can distract users, and detract from the core value of the service.
- Said 'no' to some last minute changes. It's felt a bit uncomfortable as I haven't been here for the lead up and don't know the full back story to the asks, but I have a job to protect the team and ensure last minute curveballs don't affect our release unless they are critically important.
- Fully taken over from our contract product manager, who has left for another project. This hasn't made a drastic change to my day-to-day yet, aside from an even greater volume of unread emails.
- I've refreshed our roadmap. Cue more 'why?' questions.
- Started sketching out a presentation with my fellow senior PM for next week's all directorate call, including 'what is product?' and 'what are roadmaps (and what are they not)?'.
- Attended a delightful lean coffee with colleagues from across DLUHC Digital, from multiple service teams. It was wonderful to reconnect with friends from previous roles/projects after an intense period of being solely focussed on learning the new job.
- A few introductory calls with new members of our supplier team.
- Trawled through our backlog and made a long list of questions (most of them: is this still needed / what is the user need for this?).
- Sifted CVs for a business analyst role in another team. I probably should have declined this request because I've so much on, but I can't help but care about us hiring good people and ensuring candidates don't wait longer than necessary just because we couldn't find an extra person for the sift panel.
- Pushed through a migraine when I probably should have had a lie down instead.
- Enjoyed seeing the digital community migrate to Bluesky. And started a thread that surfaced a lot of opinions about Oxford commas.
