Weeknote S10:E05
Theme — Back in the North
“Weeks are the four-on-the-floor kick-drum of eternity” Russell Davies
Most of this week was spent either driving to and from Macclesfield or being at Agile Manchester. We left home on Tuesday at about lunchtime and got to Macclesfield, where we were staying, at about 6:15. Mick and Roxy came with me.
On Wednesday I got the train into Manchester and walked to the studio in Hive in the Northern Quarter. I am quite familiar with that bit of Manchester thanks to my stint working with Department for Education and wandering round the various eateries with the team.
Dog claws on a wooden floor had made for a bit of a disturbed night so I didn’t leave the hotel until after 9:00 which meant I missed the keynote on day one and I got there in time for the first tea break.
Sessions
My first session was by Holly Donahue who is a Fractional Chief Product Owner. Apparently the term fractional is becoming more common in digital roles. It means she provides services to a number of businesses.
Holly’s session was great and covered lots of ground for people who have read all of the books and have an image of the work they would like to do but they have not fully considered the environment in which they are working.
Holly talked about Andy Tabberer, who I know from our Systems Convening group, and how he helped build relationships related to the piece of work Holly was doing.
Next up was Sathpal Singh who continued the theme about product leadership.
Sath shared an image of his career. Mine is more like Spaghetti junction with some dead ends.
Sath talked about bias and shared a great article from HBR in January 1986
From that article — “Some words of caution are in order. The holistic approach to product development may not work in all situations. It has some built-in limitations: It requires extraordinary effort on the part of all project members throughout the span of the development process. Sometimes, team members record monthly overtime of 100 hours during the peak and 60 hours during the rest of the project.”
Thankfully the manifesto came along in 2001 to recommend a sustainable pace.
At lunch I chatted to Nick Smith who I worked alongside on the Service Manual team at GDS for a while.
In the afternoon I went to Hannah Del’Armi and Stephen Mounsey’s session, Agile Adhesion: making it stick. I enjoyed the embodied work using constellations. As Hannah said it can feel a bit “woo” but I am usually able to make the space safe enough for people to join in to different levels depending on how comfortable they are.
We did a 1:1 session with another participant. I would like to say thank you to Michael as it was something I had not really given enough thought to. I have use embodied constellation work for a long time. Can anyone remember the fruit estimating in Fulham and in particular Angus’s orange?
At the end of day one I had very sore feet and still had to walk back to Piccadilly and then up a big hill in Macclesfield. We went to the Picturedrome food court for dinner. Roxy was spoilt with fusses.
On day two I got away in plenty of time to get to the venue and do some bits before Emily Webber’s keynote, which was a great follow on from Giles Turnbull’s one at Agile in the City Bath & Bristol last year. Emily’s focused more on hybrid environments and was packed with good stuff.
After the break I attended the session on Psychological safety by Jitesh Gosai from the BBC which was great but is something I probably don’t need to attend any more sessions on and at the split moved to one of the quiet spaces and spent the next 45 minutes finessing my slides.
My session was after lunch and I was surprised how full the room was, (Not shown above).
I don’t normally bother with speaker notes but as I wanted to give some of the recommendations from the Buckland review I had put some in. I could not get the correct screen on the projector so I gave up that idea.
The talk went well apart from that, I would have been better off putting some sticky notes into the report. Ah well, lesson learned.
I used Ahaslides to get some feedback and questions as we moved through the talk. I will write it up separately and link it back here.
There were some great questions and people seemed to get a lot out of it. I have already been asked to give the talk again so that has to be a good sign.
During the conference I met a few people who said some version of “I know you off Twitter” which is always great. I got to see quite a few people I have not seen for a good while.
Again my feet were killing me by the time I left the venue. I left early so that I could meet Imran Hussain for a natter.
Next talk I will be wearing my allbirds
When I got back to Macclesfield I had left the car at the station and had not paid enough attention to the parking so I got a ticket #ADHDtax
We went to the Picturedrome again and Roxy was spoilt, again, lots of fusses and someone brought her a bone dog treat.
I was hoping to meet with someone on Friday morning but they had a thing so we checked out of the hotel by 09:30 and headed off. This meant that despite a bit of traffic on the M5 we made it home by 5pm. We would have visited Leeds but my mother in law is still gadding about in Australia.
Next Week
Next week I am staying in Dorset, I have some coaching sessions, a conversation about a big decision and I should start preparing for my next talk.
This weekend we will be catching up with Mum & Dad. Dad wants a ‘getting familiar with your new car’ session as he still hasn’t driven it. Mum has a GP appointment for her lower leg neuropathy and they will hopefully get their Covid jabs soon as they are now registered as housebound and can get a visit.
My next planned open talk is at Agile Yorkshire in July. https://agileyorkshire.org/
Have a great weekend
