Weeknotes SE301 — DeliverCon 2022 special
I had such a brilliant time at DeliverCon 2022, hosted at the Made Tech offices last Thursday, that it galvanised (reminded?) me that I’d planned to start weeknotes up again this year (and failed miserably to actually do so!).
Anyway, I thought I’d share a bit more about the session I ran there and the conference in general…
Joining a hybrid event
I joined remotely on the first day and loved how the organisers had planned for a hybrid event — cameras in the room were somehow able to zoom in on people asking questions and also show those of us at home what was going on across the two rooms in the Made Tech offices. Some sort of ‘Owl Cam’ made this possible (a quick Google makes me think it was a Meeting Owl Pro…) and the facilitators were able to expertly use this and the Raise Hand and Chat functions on Microsoft Teams to balance taking questions in the ‘real room’ with questions in the ‘online room’.
Face-to-face and pastries
On the second day, I made my way to the Made Tech offices and felt stupidly excited about seeing colleagues from across the discipline and the sector In Real Life™. This was followed quite swiftly by excitement about the Pain Au Chocolat (sad but true) and the sandwiches which would come later. (why are little triangle sandwiches so appealing?), plus the possibility of a pint in the pub with some current and past team members afterwards!
My session
I’d put my name down on the EasyRetro board what felt like AGES ago to explain what we’ve done with a Capability Framework we created for Delivery at Citizens Advice with Emily Webber in early 2021.
The nerves were pretty real, not helped by a few technical hitches (of course!) and a moment or two of screaming microphone feedback but once I got going, the rock in the pit of my stomach slowly disappeared and I started to really enjoy myself.
Here are the slides I ran through (‘How we created a Delivery Capability Framework to develop our team’), which explain what we did, i.e.:
- Created a definition for delivery as a discipline
- Created a list of core capabilities that contribute to that discipline definition
- Identified and described the skills, knowledge and experience needed for each capability
- Created a proficiency definition for each skill — from Awareness through to Expert
- Looked at what other disciplines Delivery Managers would need knowledge of (e.g. Product Management, User Research, Engineering) in their roles and to enable ‘sideways’ as well as ‘upward’ movement and career progression
I also ran through how we’re meeting our skills needs and other ways we have embedded the framework to serve as an anchor for lots of great things we have going on in the Delivery team and Community of Practice right now.
There was great engagement from the audience and lots of fab questions and before I knew it, we’d come to the end of the session!
Networking / nattering
The word ‘networking’ makes me shudder a bit — I prefer to think of it as nattering. And it was non-stop-natter with a load of great people after I’d run my session, who were kind enough to give me great feedback and ask about connecting to discuss the framework, our Community of Practice and what they’re doing in their own teams and organisations.
I am naturally very curious (read: nosy) so I’m really looking forward to developing these relationships, learning from others and sharing more about what we’re doing here at Citizens Advice.
Thank yous
For now, all that remains to be said is a huge thank you to the organisers of DeliverCon (especially Sam, who helped me so much on the day) and Made Tech for hosting.
Thank you also to everyone who took the time to share feedback either in person or online afterwards. It’s been a challenging time for me recently for a whole host of reasons, so it was lovely to get a little boost last week and reflect on all the amazing things we’ve done as a team and a Community of Practice over the last year.
Launderettes, penknives, creative writing and other stuff…
Mustn’t forget this bit!
If you’ve looked through the deck above, you’ll have seen I’m moving out of London in the next month or two and we’ve booked our wedding venue for next year. So there’s lots of exciting personal life stuff going on at the moment, not to mention the fact that we FINALLY got our giant L-shaped sofa after waiting a mere 15 weeks and encountering lots of problems along the way. Yay for an end to camping chairs in the living room!
