Week notes s1e1 w/c 18 March

I’m new to the concept of week notes after coming across them as part of my move to the Co-op.

They were mentioned in my induction pre-reading material and after some reading on medium I thought I’d give this ago.

Interestingly I also noticed Ste Montgomery at CAB is also starting week notes so might have to share our experiences.

T&M challenges with agency Agile

Oh the joys of trying to make Agile work in agencies. After carefully prioritising a backlog and agreeing to a scope of work to be delivered, you inevitably get bugs which have been accommodated within the sprint but allowing for change requests and improvements in the sprint is tricky. My thinking is that improvements should be added to the back log to be addressed in the next sprint ( unless you can easily squeeze in a few more updates in the current time).

Client-side product owners not owning the detail of the requirements or making assumptions and expectations of what a feature ‘should do’ or expected to do is tricky.

And then inevitably the time it takes to deal with speccing the improvements and changes takes more time ( which isn’t budgeted for).

I’d be interested to know others thoughts on how we get around assumption bias when scoping user stories? As we had spoken to the client in detail about the requirements, so it wasn’t for the lack of spec or discussion.

I’m also excited to see how these challenges play out when back in an in-house setting as I’m embarking on my move to the Co-Op digital team 😃 (future week notes to cover this for sure)

Yoga time

After not actively making time to do yoga as much in 2019 this week I’ve been fortunate enough to make 2 classes.

One on Tuesday night with JCI Manchester and Anxiety UK and one at work.

I genuinely think workplace yoga schemes are so good to encourage people to step away from their desks.

I’ve also got a discount code I plan to use with movement for modern life to try and build in some mini home yoga workouts when I cant get to a studio or go to a class in the week.

Learning about week notes

As always when a new way of doing something crops up we look to examples and leaders in the space for inspiration.

I came across some great articles on medium around the process of #weeknotes so decided to go with the initial simple 3 things approach.

I’m keen to explore more around different styles, but like how the act as a very open reflection on day to day life.

If only we all endeavoured to be more open around the challenges we have?

I wonder if people have used week notes with their managers to act as a discussion starter on progress and challenges.

Anyways that’s enough musings for my first week.

Untill next time.