I have, according to every calendar I can find, been at the Royal Borough of Greenwich for 22 weeks,110 working days or 5 calendar months (practically to the day) since I started my south of the river adventure. Where has the time gone?! I feel distinctly like putting my head in the sand about how much time has passed (or putting my head under the blanket as is Peppers preference) because I find it quite daunting to think about what I have achieved in that time and has it been what I would have liked to or did I fall short? That’s a reflection I will be doing but not right now…
In the world of backup this week we made fabulous progress.
Jamie and Elliot got a great set of requirements together for our Microsoft 365 backup needs and we provided them to our partners. We’re looking forward to hearing back from them about what kind of capabilities there are on the market to meet what we need for our Microsoft 365 estate.
I also had a great session with Philippa, Sukh and Timo where we articulated various statements describing what good would like like for the project by 24th December. We voted on if we thought we were on track to meet each vision of good or if we were going to miss it. We prioritised the ones we thought we would miss and formed actions for the top 4. There were a lot more statements of good that we are going to miss than I would like but we at least now have a view of where we need to focus the effort we have. I felt a bit rudderless about this before the session last week so I am very pleased to, once again, have something really specific to aim for.
In cloud migration land, I did my first ever project weeknote which felt like a real blast from the past. I’m going to, unashamedly, copy and paste the highlights here:
We made some great progress on our ‘Now’ tasks this week. We have selected the firewall we will use to protect the connection between our data centre and AWS and worked out what changes need making to set this up. By early this week we should have a fully protected connection we can enable.
Our number 1 candidate for the pilot migration is getting stronger and stronger. The app owner (David White) has enough capacity to support the migration and testing and is very much onboard with finding it a new home. There are no blockers from a software provider perspective either, they will support a cloud hosted version so all good there, too. We have a meeting with our partners and David this week to hash out any last queries before we can make a solid decision and plan in the work.
Elliot supported on an issue blocking the landing zone (AWS word for the main entrance to our cloud environment) build around single sign on. This was resolve don Friday afternoon so out landing zone build is officially unblocked. Amazing what getting the right minds in a room for 2 hours can do!
Non project wise, Beth hosted yet another great lunch and learn about dealing with, and thriving in, uncertainty. It was a lot to take in and, although I found the content really interesting, I found it hard to engage with at pace. I need to go and do some more reading to really embed what I think I learned (which is that fear in uncertainty is totally natural and you can leverage it to your advantage).
I also went to the really excellent session hosted by Jenny (a senior service designer who recently joined Lingjing’s team) on mapping. She articulated the benefits of it so well! I was really impressed with her preparation too. She created an amazing canvas which I will be going back to on the subject.
Finally, I had a great coaching session with Michelle. I was in a bit of a pickle feeling very guilty for imposing myself on people who are already very busy and feeling deeply uncomfortable about it. I got introduced to myself 5 years in the future so I could hear all the wisdom she has to give on the subject. I have to say, future me is indeed very wise. I enjoyed spending time with her and left the session feeling much less guilty and uncomfortable. I commit to spending more time with future me listening to her wisdom when I need to.
