The Castle
I haven’t written any weeknotes in yonks. Mainly because there hasn’t been anything interesting to say or much progress to report. But it’s starting to feel like there is a way through, and we’re gathering support from partner teams, leadership and colleagues in assurance.
Over much of the last few weeks, I’ve been navigating the governance and assurance processes as we try to get permission to test a hypothesis. A lot of the time I’ve been frustrated with the slow speed, and the conversations can feel circular at times. I’ve been reading Franz Kafka’s The Castle, leaning on the role of irony and metaphor in working through paradox.
But when you piece it all together, we’re trying to do something relatively new and the processes weren’t really designed for this kind of work which spans multiple portfolios. So I get it. It’s still frustrating, but I can understand why we are where we are.
We’re a dot-joining team, so I’ve written about why the problem with test results exists, and some of the work needed to fix it. As Al said back in summer, this is very much ‘a data and politics alpha’.
In the spirit of dot-joining – and not twiddling our thumbs – we’re looking at other opportunities in parallel. We did some impact-mapping to frame those scouting activities against the value they might deliver. We’re getting more comfortable with the output of work not just being software but the gaps we bridge too.
In that spirit, we started a community for all the prevention teams shipping to the app, so we can learn from each other, re-use what works, and help unblock things together. The vibes were particularly good in the first one, so props to everyone who showed up and made it great. I’ll try not to have tech hiccups next time.
We’re in a pioneer space. It’s still bricolage. Looking at how design and better use of data help with making the healthy choice the easy choice.
Being surrounded by nice humans helps.
‘Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don’t accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour.’ – Franz Kafka, The Castle