It’s September already? Well, at least those pesky kids will be back in school soon. Quite a few of us have been on leave but we’ve still been busy.

Reviewing our team workflow

Paul has been working with the team to review our current workflow process, identifying issues and opportunities for improvement.

The goal of this exercise is to become:

  • More focused - we spend less time on unnecessary and distracting tasks, and more time delivering value
  • More strategic - we will have the space and structure to make sure we’re working on the right things
  • More open - there will be more visibility of work within the team, improving knowledge sharing and opportunities for collaboration. Outside of our team, we’ll be able to better demonstrate our value
  • More predictable - our ability to plan work will improve and our customers will understand what to expect from us.

Following input and feedback from the team, Paul came up with a proposal for a new workflow to help meet these goals. Headline features of this proposal include:

  • Moving chunkier work that we want to plan and prioritise out the the MS Planner board (which is currently attempting to house everything)
  • Creating a separate backlog for this work so that we can do said planning and prioritisation
  • New tooling and processes to facilitate the above

We’ll be setting up, figuring out and getting started with all this in the coming weeks.

Also happening this week

  • Phil has been mapping out the apply for a felling licence form. The form is being updated to coincide with changes to the Forestry Act. The current form is out of date and is in need of some TLC.
  • Sticking with forms and Phil has finished mapping out some of our online forms. We have been looking for inconsistencies. The next step is to look at parts of our online forms and try to standardise the text within certain areas.
  • Alex has drafted some measures for success that can be used when we are updating our forms. James Lewis has provided feedback. The next step is to refine the document based on feedback before we share for a more open review.
  • James has been working with the Flood Warning Service replacement project to review the interface UX. He’s also looking for tutorials about GA4, the new version of Google Analytics, and working on revising our felling licence content to reflect new legislative changes.
  • Heledd, Alex and Paul have been planning the Digital team away day, taking place later in September
  • This week, Sophie’s been working with different teams to update their team Intranet pages and refresh the content to ensure it consistently meets our organisation’s requirements.
  • Sophie’s also been chatting with Sam Bosanquet to learn more about mushrooms and fungi ahead of updating the banner on the NRW website for the autumn months.
  • We’ve updated the Google Analytics tracking code on the intranet to the new GA4 version, future-proofing the intranet analytics

Friday fun* fact

That lush smell after it has just rained outside has a name: petrichor. It comes from the ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) for rock and ἰχώρ (ikhṓr), the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods in Greek mythology.

*fun debatable