This week we changed up how we do our sprint plans and retros. For almost a year, we’ve been running the planning and retros separately on different days, but I often found we would discuss the same things we did at the previous meeting. This time, we decided to run a retro and plan in one, so we look back at the past sprint for the first hour, have a break, and then spend an hour planning the next. This has helped save us a lot of time discussing our workload and also reduces one meeting in the calendar! Happy times!
Howdy folks! I’ve had a busy week, with one of the main activities being embedding into the service standards service manual project team.
We looked through the rough timelines for the alpha and the start of beta, made some adjustments, and discussed who needs to be involved and when.
Primarily, I’m there to support with the project communications; working in the open, sharing learnings, and feeding back to the Comms team so we’re in the best position to shout about the good stuff going on here. I’ve already got some ideas for how to make this stand out, so watch this space!
On Thursday, Catrin and I held our first show and tell together!
We’ve had many new starters over the past few months, so we thought a Welsh Language Standards refresher was needed.
Catrin did a brilliant job at making it an interactive session, asking questions that really got the cogs turning. We wanted to ensure people understood exactly why we comply with the standards and how important they really are. In doing this, we discussed Welsh history - the Welsh Not, Tefor and Eileen Beasley, the birth of S4C and the revelation that Catrin’s mother is a Welsh icon herself!
I then spoke about the Welsh Language Standards, what they are and why they’re there. It’s crucial that everybody within CDPS complies with these standards, not just the comms team. Hopefully in explaining their importance, and the battle that was fought to get to where we are today, they will be at the forefront of our minds from now on.
We also created this Menti:
The aim was to understand what’s needed within the organisation, what people want. Myself and Catrin will discuss the results and decide where we go from here!
Gem here! This week I finished our October Comms report which looked back on our comms and engagement activity for the month. We then use the findings to influence how we approach comms campaigns based on evidence gathered.
The interesting things I found in October included: