Weeknotes S2 E3
I am full of the joys of spring this week! A bit of sunshine goes a really long way in my book, and it’s been a glorious week.
My daughter’s class was still closed for 2 days due to staff shortages and I know lots of people in similar boats. Luckily this week my husband and mother-in-law were able to cover the gaps, and I feel very lucky to have family support nearby.
One of the main themes of this week has been connecting with colleagues. I’ve not been into the office regularly since my eldest daughter started school in September — it’s a 45min drive that now feels like quite an inefficient use of time and too much to juggle. But I went in on Tuesday, enjoyed a few chats with people that wouldn’t otherwise have happened and a sociable lunch for the first time in ages. It dawned on me that I’ve been thinking about it all wrong, comparing my productivity on office days to days at home. I’m going to prioritise a fortnightly visit to the office, starting with next Tuesday when I’m being lured in with the promise of spicy noodles from our foodie Director of Digital Marketing, Phil.
I also carved out time to catch up with a couple of colleagues from my team, Ellie and Dave. We shared notes on coaching and how to help our clients to continue growing in their digital maturity and approach to solving user problems, and talked about how life at Torchbox has changed over the past 5+ years and what that’s meant for the roles we play. Ellie’s also been trying out a new way of collating key information about a client for sharing with team members internally, which I’m following as I onboard Mel, one of our delivery managers, onto one of my client projects.
The other theme of my week has been a deep dive into metrics and measurement, thanks to a last-minute booking onto the Mind The Product workshop on this. It was brilliant to spend two mornings with a group of product managers from across sectors, sharing challenges and ideas. I’ll be taking some ideas forward with my clients as we assess our measurement frameworks in line with new strategies, and refresh what we’re tracking as we move to GA4. There was some interesting discussion around finding the right North Star metric, identifying pair metrics or checks to avoid over-optimising for a given metric, and how to influence the team in becoming increasingly evidence-led. My previous role at Oxfam involved running the ‘test and learn’ programme and reporting on digital fundraising performance, so I love the chance to geek out over stats when I get the chance!
There was no wholesome outing this Thursday as I opted to send my youngest into nursery so I could do the training course. I did manage to get up early and squeeze in a little sunrise walk before school and nursery drop offs. I’m trying to get some miles in before I take on the Yorkshire 3 Peaks challenge in May, in aid of 1625 Independent People, and admittedly enjoy the smug feeling of having been out for a walk before 7am!
Next week I’m looking forward to sprint planning for one of my clients and taking some of our big roadmap priorities into sprint. We’ve also got a demo for a client that’s just finishing up a bumper 6 weeks of enhancement sprints. I’m really proud of what we’ve got delivered, and look forward to seeing how it performs.
