Author: Aden Davies

I write this note from a bed in the Copthorne Hotel in Slough. Been to Legoland for the day as it is my eldest Son’s birthday on Tuesday it has been a nice end to a very shitty week.

The very shitty bit was my role being put at risk on Wednesday. The company I work for has been bought out and on the same day as the announcement where the majority of the company found out about our glorious future a dozen or so of us found ourselves invited to a different room via a very similar looking email to the rest of the company. Cue confusion and panic and a very grim taxi journey into work for me as said email arrived while I was travelling. Massive shock and not really recovered yet. Cost cutting stings. Much more to say about this but now is not the right time or the write time.

Job hunting went pretty well. Great reaction to me sharing my new on Twitter and Linked In and I was properly cheered by the lovely people who shared my news along with warm words about me. Not a complete failure it seems. If I can seal a new role in the 60 day notice period I have will be a better measure of my worth.

Watched a lot of Glastonbury. Jon Hopkins and the Chemical Brothers favourite sets so far. Goat Girl the first thing I watched which I had no idea about beforehand but was gripped by it. Great coverage from the BBC on iPlayer this year although so much I would love to do to make it better.

I have said more than enough but not much of what I would like to write.

We had three workshops this week to kick off new teams. Excellently organised and run by Richard. Finally got teams focused on outcomes and more singular objectives with the freedom to do more creative work under the scope of those things. Interesting to see who revels in that and drives what could be built and who wants to be told what to build and all the interactions and differences between. Also wondering how well the product owner will do in this new world i.e. me.

Started reading Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan. Only a few chapters but kicked off with a young girl who draws the images of dead people in a post apocalyptic London although I am not sure what event caused the issues.

Finished The Good Fight series 3. Great telly. Great characters. Some over the top stories. Only drama really challenging the Trump government it seems and the shorts in it are excellent.

Started moving my blog from WordPress to Jekyll hosted on Github. Got stuck quickly. Thanks to a patient testing colleague (Hello Samuel) I got a little further. Being shown the way helps me get there faster that is for certain.

Only one run, better than none. Aiming for 3 next week because my belt is getting ever tighter.

The fall out from the big release the week before was still being felt. We had a code freeze in place at the start of the week still. Thankfully it did not last long and we got plenty of fixes out. Problems largely resolved now and we have made improvements in lots of places. Engineers have been amazing.

Some team changes got closer to being finalised. We are moving to three teams with responsibility for different areas (Customer, Commercial and Technical success to start with). Workshops with all the teams next week to get charter and backlogs and other bits sorted before getting started. Can’t wait.

Friday I went to Product People North in Leeds. Very good indeed. The topic for the day was death and there was some great service and product work on display. Burial at Sea, Inheritance Tax and just registering a death were a complex set of processes that had to be navigated at stressful times. The highlight of the day was the Co-op funeral team talking about how they built an internal system for their funeral homes. A great example of proper research, real empathy and respect bringing digital into a very traditional business.

Finished watching Chernobyl. Very good. Very bleak.

Managed a couple of runs to work. Slow and unsteady.

Big project release finally happened on Tuesday evening. 20 million transactions to migrate and a real time feed to stitch into the site and app behind a whitelist while keeping everything else running. It went really well until about 6.30am on Wednesday when the database began using up loads of resources, locking and basically being very unhappy. Our initial joy evaporated and after very long days for some people (I was awake for about 30 hours Tuesday over into Wednesday and others did far more than I) putting things live and even longer months building the thing it was a real gut punch.

We carried on having passed the point of rollback return a few hours earlier but the problems persisted for most of the week and we are still not fully back to normal as I type this although the customer problems we experienced Wednesday and Thursday have thankfully been resolved.

A shitty week that had a few silver linings. The way people came together in engineering to rally round this issue was great to see. We have made changes in several areas that will benefit a number of future projects as well as just making stuff run better. A big chunk of technical debt has been paid off but it has caused some other debts to need paying too after a lack of focus on them for too long.

Away from mega releases we finally agreed teams for our new Business Outcome Orientated Teams (BOOTs). 3 teams focused on different parts of the business and a singular outcome instead of project Tetris.

Watched Killing Eve season 2 in very short order. Brilliant TV. Ludicrous in parts but still head shoulders above most things on TV. I also watched Detective Pikachu with the kids this morning. Surprisingly enjoyable. Ludicrous consistently but still…

Let’s hope next week will be less ludicrous all round.

Back home on my sofa after a week in Turkey. Had a lovely time. First time going all inclusive with the kids. Mildly successful for one very fussy child.

Kids made friends on day two which made things much easier. Had a few outings with both families which was great including two boat trips and also a few inflatable sofas.

My son fell off the back of one at speed which was a bit of a heart in mouth moment but he thought it was awesome.

Managed to watch the three big football matches. Villa v Derby by the Pool bar with a Scottish Villa fan and two Celtic fans.

The Europa League final in a bar in Hisaranou with a huge screen and no people in the bar even though they served ridiculously cheap beer. The Champions League Final in a conference room in the hotel on a dodgy projector, Turkish commentary and a high ration of Spurs to Liverpool fans and I was supporting the reds due to my son being a bit of a fan and his mum being from quite near Liverpool (paper thin excuse).

Finally read a book (and got sunburnt doing it). First one since January. The Outsider by Stephen King. Enjoyable thriller that took a turn from a gruesome child murder whodunnit to something a little more supernatural.

Back to work tomorrow. Big project release date on Tuesday. An interesting week ahead. Hoping my sun tan helps me through it.

Writing this from Olu Deniz in Turkey after sneaking away for a week. It has been a long day of travel but it is lovely.

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Turkey.

A post shared by Aden Davies (@aden_76) on May 26, 2019 at 8:36am PDT

Big project had a go / no go meeting to decide if we could pick a release date and thankfully it was a go after some fine testing work. Thing scheduled for 4th of June. Can’t wait.

No running at all which was bad. Also lots of unhealthy (but pleasant) drinking and eating. Got back on the skateboard with the youngest. Trying to get him into pushing off and riding but he is a little reticent. Going to get a lesson soon with him. I need lessons too.

Finished Game of Thrones. Fairly enjoyable last series but I can see why lots are complaining. Felt a bit simplistic but still much better than a lot of dross on TV.

Next weeks note will be all about my experience with eating, drinking and swimming and smug Instagram photos…I hope.

As expected I forgot to record how much work I did on non-customer related things. But looking back from a Sunday night it was not very much. Maybe next week.

Something that will help is getting teams set up to build to outcomes rather than Project Tetris. Our change to this way of working rumbles on and this week should see us get the new teams together. I think small empowered teams are the only way to make useful things. This tweet from Tom Loosemore resonated

As did this follow up post from Giles Turnbull on permission in organisations

We had our annual game of FA Cup day football to celebrate a few friends birthdays. A 4-2 loss for the SWFC team. Frustrating and tiring. Too old and unfit for football. The eating and drinking after was good though.

Trapped at the surface. Unable to dive down into the detail. Scrolling down for ever. Like a toilet roll spooling into my mind. Not present in the outside world. Screen dragging me in. Nits of brightness making me a nitwit. Not reading anything. No critical thinking. Nothing sticking in my mind. No application of myself. I say I want to be better but if I really did I would do something about it. Boring. Write this shit every week and usually delete it. Get happier. Stop being so hard on myself. Don’t write bits of weeknotes when you have had too much whisky.

Feels like I spend way too much time on things that are not making things for customers. I need to fix that. Going to measure exactly how much of my time I spent doing non-customer related things. I bet I forget to do it because I have meetings.

Trying to get back into reading again. Bought an actual physical book. Open Up – The power of talking about money by Alex Holder. Four chapters in and it is exactly what I need. A work orientated book but that is grabbing my attention and is well related to work we are trying to do at the moment.

Went to see Avengers Endgame at the IMAX. It was very good. I wonder how iconic it will turn out to be with half the world seeing it?

Watched American Animals at home. It was pretty good. Soundtrack was better. These days I only seem to consume ‘new’ music from film and TV. Had a good Spotify session after. Drunk a lot of whisky (and wrote that top paragraph and the next one)

Drawn to people on twitter who have things I don’t. Skills and capability wise. Interest. Knowledge. Just do stuff attitude. Seem to be living a good life not showy people but those that seem well read, know art, travel, eat interesting food, know things. I know this is a fools errand comparing your life to others. I just want to feel and know and do some more of those things.

Enough of this sub par misery lit. It was a good week overall. Some good project progress. Had some drinks for a leaving do. Interviewed a nice person for a new role. Went for an impromptu take away and drinks with friends. Played football in the park with the boys. Watched some amazing Champions League football (and missed a lot of it deciding to watch Line of Duty instead). All that being said I want to leave the late night Monday writing to stay in because it can’t all just be what I feel at 8pm sober on a Sunday when I usually write this. Need all weeks naval gazing to be in it. Need to be more open and a bit uncomfortable writing this stuff.

Felt a little out of it at the start of the week. Move to proper product focused scrum still feels far away. So much process already, so much more needed. It feels right but so many artefacts and a feeling of artifice. It is because I don’t know it well enough and I just want to build stuff. I don’t want to engage with enough of the detail. Staying too high level for reasons I can’t explain. Fear of failure? Looking stupid when I don’t do something ‘right’? Imposter syndrome bullshit? Procrastination as an excuse for laziness or fear of it not being perfect? Let the process makers make process. Let the process be applied to me. Learn how to build stuff better.

Breathe. Stop being a miserable prick. There were lots of highlights this week.

Reached a big milestone on a big project. One that should enable us to get to release a very big thing soon. It felt really good. We did break the website for about ten minutes during the first attempt at the release in the morning but that made the successful release in the afternoon feel a bit sweeter (for me anyway).

The feeling of delivery release was quickly quelled with an annoying hurdle for the next phase but the amazing devs were amazing and got over it by Friday.

Talking of good things I saw a badger in the garden for the first time, the furry little thing triggered a solar security light and I got a glimpse of it briefly. I have seen their shit on the lawn before but good to see the actual culprit. Really quite lucky with the garden wildlife we get. Not so much the variety of animal shit in our garden.

I watched the Robin Williams Documentary, Come Inside My Mind. Brilliant mind, flawed in so many ways. Loved this quote from Billy Crystal. He needed that little extra hug you can only get from strangers…that laugh is a drug. I can imagine that is quite the drug. One other thing that stood our for me were his amazing clothes. Dreadful. I would watch a follow called come inside my wardrobe (which looking at some of his shirts it looks like someone may have done)

Polished off Halt and Catch Fire series 3 (another long put off series). Got well into it after a short while. Some great lines from Joe Macmillan that I might try out in the office. The time jump for the last two episodes of the season was really jarring, so much so I had to check I was watching the right episode but it was a stroke of brilliance.

My wife went to Tenerife for the weekend with two of her oldest friends (old as in longest time not as in ancient although they are both getting closer to 40). Single parenting for 4 days. Children still alive. My blood pressure is not too bad either. We had a good time, watched some films, played some computer games, went swimming, played some football and went to see some Leonardo Da Vinci drawings. A week that got better as it went on.

One of my team returned from maternity leave this week. It was great to have her back although she was none too happy about all the stuff that was going on when she left that still had not been delivered. Lost in focus, other things taking precedence, only so much resource, other excuses I have not thought of yet.

Did a politically silly thing this week. It was semi successful but with some blow back the full extent of which I am unsure of. Frustration made me do it and I think I did it for the right reasons i.e. to get something moving that is a little stuck (and blocking us doing a lot of the things mentioned in paragraph 1). Some movement on said massive beastly project (not as a result of my silly political thing) but just a speck of light at the end of the metaphorical project tunnel.

Feeling a little detached and out of things as I try to play a little part in making a bigger transition organisation wise to ‘proper agile’. Again feel like I am missing out on other things that maybe I should be focusing on but if we don’t get this change over the line it will be bitty project work for ever more and that just won’t do.

We said goodbye to a much loved, highly skilled and upsettingly young engineer. Lots of beer was drunk. I stayed out too late with people a lot younger than I. It was a good end and now this young man is on to the next phase, of what I suspect will be, an impressive career.

Finished watching Fleabag series 2. It is as good as everyone says. I also binge watched series 2 of The Good Fight (after binge watching series 1 last week). I had put off watching it for a while and I forgot how much I loved The Good Wife. Great telly week.

First running since the half marathon. A little 5.7k that felt horrific. An 8.2k run to work which felt a bit better but still a bit of pain in my knee and hip. New running goals needed for May as I want to get faster. New work goals needed for May as I want to get faster.