Alex has shown initiative in trying to fix the world around him, but his ideas sometimes lack practicality.

Building a team | Effort 1 | Attainment A

I have a team of product mangers who I really trust. We’re all from different routes into the job and I definitely think that some of them are better product managers than I am. I’m really proud of our group and how we come at problems. We’re going to need more people over the next year (do please look at our jobs pages, there’ll almost always be a PM role up for the next three months or so), and we’re going to need to balance our teams really well. You can’t solve deep-seated problems by just throwing some product managers at them, you need to want to change and have the team, (lack of excessive and ill-informed) governance and permission to do it. Probably a few more devs too.

Delivering products | Effort 2 | Attainment C

We’re not getting enough over the line. Sometimes that’s because what’s being asked for is impossible (you can’t fix a 3+ million page website without a lot of JFDI tokens) or is SaaS dressed up as product (and where you actually need to change the service more than the tech). But, I have to take some responsibility for this and I am going to spend the next few months trying to work on why things aren’t scoped right, making governance boards perform useful interventions, work on permission to fail/bin prototypes and all the other good stuff that stops it being BAU dressed in a hoodie.

I do keep feeling a sense that I’m doing this wrong. I read Steve Messer’s weeknotes recently about what flavour of self organised work works best for his team and almost blew a gasket. Imagine having so much freedom to choose, so much trust with your team to experiment. Imagine having firebreaks to work on team stuff because you aren’t (apparently) up against deadlines. Imagine your stakeholders not treating that sort of team-work with contempt. And then I think about how much worse my CV is for the fact that I work somewhere that needs way more coaching and because I can’t actually point to “high performing teams” as that’s not where we are.

Being in the same job for the longest I’ve ever been in a job | Effort 4 | Attainment A*

I have been working for the University for longer than I worked for NCT back in the mists of time. I don’t hate it anywhere near as much either. Next year will be three years. I only just feel like I’m making progress with understanding the institution and how to get things done at a senior level. That’s an enjoyable shift from when I started when I was just trying to keep one team on track. However. The university doesn’t seem to seriously desire change. They focus on the same sort of appeal to inertia that used to really irritate me at Parliament. The idea that things have always been done this way and thus always must be, is such a shit way of running an organisation. I want to improve things because I genuinely believe there is a public service proposition for doing so. But, I am starting to wonder who I pass this on to, and whether I’m trying to do something that isn’t going to happen.

I also don’t know what I should do after this, being a head of product in a large HE institution is complex but completely incompatible with a lot of the private sector (at least, I haven’t heard back from well paid adverts I’ve applied to). Broadly, I haven’t got anywhere with jobs this year. I got shortlisted for a few other HE product things and a bit of NGO work, but didn’t get them over the line. I am really worried about becoming institutionalised and entirely unhireable. I keep wondering about trying to work with a mentor outside my organisation to try and keep myself understandable outside of a context where you worry about REF and OfS returns. Job offers, mentorship offers, cash envelopes welcome.

Writing the DPhil | Effort 3 | Attainment C

It has been a slow year for the doctorate. I’ve written a lot less than last year, largely due to having a new baby and being knackered in the evenings from the job. I’m planning a bit of a blitz on it next year. I did present some of my more recent writing at the Oxford Digital Ethnography Seminar and also the Cambridge Technology and Media WIP seminar which was great for keeping my presentations skills up and for thinking about peoples’ questions on the work I do. It is hard to be sure how much of what you write is comprehensible outside the group of people who work in government/tech, so challenge is really revealing and helpful.

I keep seeing online requests for a history of GDS and I’ve been so keen not to get near it because of it being lots of people’s history, it needing to be a bottom-up narrative that avoids “great man” theories, but also because everyone seems to vocally disagree with the ones that already exist (fair enough) so why put your head over the parapet. But, seeing as I have to address aspects of it as part of looking at the way that the affordances of the internet changed the interactions between campaigners, civic technologists, politicians and civil servants in the 2010s I can avoid a hagiography and get something useful and recognisable for the people who were there.

Family | Effort 1 | Attainment A**

Had a baby! Discovered it’s significantly harder to do things with two kids. Two kids and a dog borders on impossible. We’re also going to spend an extended break in Australia next year and also looking to move house to a slightly cheaper city. It’s all go, then it’s all collapsing on the sofa at night.

As is traditional, we end with a picture of the dog.