Weeknotes

An old boss of mine used to talk about change like moving a boat on the ocaean - you just make small waves but eventually it will turn. This week felt like one of those weeks, taking a few small actions here and there know that it will take a while to see the outcome but it’s worth doing anyway. 👔 - Project-R2, is into the next phase. My involvement has been less as a active participant this week and more as a guiding voice here and there. Thankfully, this means the time investment has been much less and I’ve really noticed the difference. After all these years I’m not sure why it still surprises me how difficult it really is to balance large projects and being a good manager. Thankfully this week a few other took up the mantal of this project, moving us into the due-dilligence phase, so that I could spend more time with the team. 🌱 - Since taking over the cloud team at the end of last year, there has been a long list of small but meaningful activities to get around to. Improving the frequence and quality of the meetings, drafting and finalising the strategy, adding clarity to some job descriptions and making sure the whole team knows what’s going on in the business and the comms is good. This week I made signifcant progress on all these fronts - not complete - but progress and I’m pretty happy with it. I started doing these little 5-10m update vidoes at the end of the week for my team, to call out good work and interesting project updates. Finding the right comms that suits everyone will take a bit of experimenting but I trying a few things and gathering feedback. It feels a lot more natural that is used to. 🤓 - I’ve been involved in the enhancement of our managed services for a few years now, Project-R made some significant jumps on this last year. This year is about formalising that and looking at ISO 20000. It will take a while, but we’re building the roadmap, identifying the gaps and making progress. As we work with larger organisations and more public sector organisations this is becoming table-stakes. I can’t say I know significant amounts about all the details of this standard just yet, but I will be going deep on it over the next few months. I’m hoping to have enough time to document my learning journey on that here. What a nerd. 💍 - This week was my 13th wedding anniversary. We went out for a lovely meal at Boys Hall and had some really good, long overdue quality time together. I am always amazed by every anniversary, both that I am old enough to have been married for that long and that I have been able to sustain a marriage for that long. Long may our love continue. 📈 - This weeks stats: ...

This week is the cold shower of real-life after the brief interlude of new year. Last week’s few days of relax and TV bringe watching quickly forgotton by five days of back-to-back meetings and workshops. Not a lot of context switching thankfully, just a lot of work to be done on a small number of topics. Busy but not too stressful. I guess as first weeks back go, it could have been a lot worse. ...

🏠 - The week between Christmas and New Year is an odd one isn’t it. This is the time when I do a little as possible. I stay in, keep warm, and binge as much as is possible to binge with the scribble of notes as ideas emerge for me the re-read for work later. 📈 - This weeks stats: 144 minutes of podcasts 5,483 average weekly steps 102 book pages read (1984 - p203-305) 📺 - This weeks background entertainment: ...

The week of Christmas always passes with the contradiction of flying past and feeling feeling like the longest week. Family enjoyment all around. 📈 - This weeks stats: 377 minutes of podcasts 4,449 average weekly steps 53 book pages read (1984 - p149-202) 📺 - This weeks background entertainment: Bridgerton - S02 + S03 Amandaland Christmas Special Stranger Things - S02 A Ghost Story for Christmas - 2025

First week of my 3 weeks of leave, I have mostly been focused on … nothing much. Decompressing from a pretty stressful couple of months of work means that this week is binge watching lots of tv and movies, catching up on reading articles, whitepapers and some books and trying not too think about too much work. What that means is my background entertainment section below is larger than usual, I’ll be shortly adding a few more entries to /bookmarks and there I’ll be spending a day next week drafting one or two blog posts for the coming year. ...

My last working week before Christmas meant, looking back and looking forward. I’m not going to spend too much time looking back during this weeks weeknote, you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for my blogpost on that so this week has more been about preparations, hand-overs and looking forward. 🖊️ - I spent a decent amount of time this week writing down my strategy for the cloud practice. This not not about some manger aggrandising but something that is important for the wider business to understand the things we’ll be focusing on as a team (and consequently things we won’t be). It’s actually something that has been an ask from the engineers themselves for some time, that they would like to have a clear communicated strategy, something that focuses them all towards a goal. Hopefully what I am working on will achive that. This week was the first draft. It will take a first pass through the other directors and then the team leads before a final version is presented to everyone else. This is not the first time I’ve written such a thing and I base my approach on the famous (infamous?!) AWS 6-pager format. While I am not dogmatic about the approach, having something in written form backed by real data I do believe is important. So let’s see if it passes the first sniff test. ❔ - I was pretty light on my Project-R2 contributions this week. I was only a contributing member for this weeks workshop and preparations were underway for presentations while I am away. I did however spend some time reading and responding the the first batch of questions. I always like this bit because the questions often tell you more about a company and their current experience than anything they might say directly. Mostly strightforward stuff, but their have been a few questions that have required some thinking. Even if this whole process isn’t successful there have been a lot of things a long the way that will result in service improvements over the next year. 🧰 - I had a session this week on tooling where two teams got to come together and agree on a joint roadmap. There are lots of things we’re working on at the moment and lots of tools we’re likely to replace in the near future as we’re scaling beyond what they are capable of. There are some fundimental things however that are under the microscope - monitoring, cmdb discovery, finops. All of thes will result in further good deep-dive conversations in the new year. What was good though was the re-affirm that our princiapls of collaboration and build the interface build the tools still applies. 🎄 - So, this is indeed my last working week of the year which means a bit of rushed end to the week, but fret not I will still be writing weeknotes during the Christmas period. I still have a lot of reading to do so I’ll still have a few insights to share. I’ll also be working on my end-of-year reflection post so there is that to look forward to. 📈 - This weeks stats: ...

Another big Project-R2 week this week, but also really getting to know my new team much better and thinking about the future. 🗣️ - The result of last weeks cruch time meant that a few of my 1:1s had to be pushed back a few days. I hate having to move 1:1s because I respect the time I spend with people and the mutual value of the sessions, however in this case, even if I could have shuffled things I don’t think I would have been in the right mental state to support them the way they deserved to be supported. The knock-on effect of moving the sessions was the first two days of the week being jam-packed with 1:1s. Taking on a new team is not easy but I’ve certainly found it easier this time and I’ve learnt my lesson by giving myself 15m breaks between sessions that ensure I’m always bringing the right energy and focus to each session. 👔 - Project-R2 didn’t stop this week. With the RFP submitted last week, Thursday had a 4-hour presenation so the rest of the week was preparing for that session. Thankfully, it went very well. The debrief session back at the office overlapped with the start of the Christmas party and a couple of celebration drinks later and I was done. Emotionally drained, but the peak has been climbed. Friday has another presentation, but I was remote and it was significantly easier once we knew what to expect. 🔮 - Friday was also a little bit of time to start thinking about my new role and thinking towards subsequent years had in store. Next week, I’ll be putting pen to paper on my cloud strategy, thinking about travel to other Claranet group countries to collaborate on some shared initatives and also what my role and the practice might bring if aquisitions were on the table in the next 18-months (nothing yet - but the market looks interesting). 📈 - This weeks stats: ...

Crunch week. No avoiding it, this was a tough one. 3 days in the office, one evening working into the early hours of morning but it’s over now and I can take a couple of days rest before the next stage starts. Did I mention it’s only 2 weeks until I’m on leave for Christmas?! ⚰️ - Project-R2 is out the door. The RFP response got completed with superhearo manuvers from several people working right up until the submission deadline. It was the reason for my office visits and took over 95% of my week. There are mixed feelings about this one. Scary/Exciting if we win it, but also Sad/Releaved if we don’t. Either way, next week follows with the presentation stage right until January - more work ahead. 👐🏼 - The only other notable highlight this week was that I had a good session meeting my team leaders face-to-face for the first time. It was important to spend this time together and hear there thoughts, opinions and prirorities. There is a good mix of voices in the room and I think with the right structure we can really make a big change. Genuinely excited. It’s this team and this new role that is keeping my motivated when everything else is a big struggle. 📈 - This weeks stats: ...

This week has been the start of crunch time. Lead for Project-R, author for Project-R2 and now Cloud Practice Director has meant long hours with context switching fuelled by caffeine and some good work collegues. I say crunch time because I’m doing this with full awareness that is is short term (a few weeks - not a sustained position) and what comes out the other side will hopefully be worth it. Despite the support (at work and at home) and the shining light at the end of the tunnel I’m not sure it’s made it any easier. It’s been a rough one. ...

Sometimes there are weeks that really push my mental resliance, testing how far I can stretch my abilities to multi-task, prioritise and still ship things. This is one of those weeks. I can confidently say I left nothing on the table. 🪆 - Project-R2 continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Asked to build a dedicated team for the oppertunity, it really means looking at building an MSP inside an MSP. Engieering, Support, HR, Finance, all elements are being considered. Good exercise, but getting in all written down and actually filling out the RFP responses continues to drain and be impacted by the occassional executive dysfunction. 🗓️ - A highlight of the week was a single session with a customer, where they discusse their project roadmap for the year and I had the oppertunity to discussed our roadmap and how it aligns with what they are trying to do. I do these types of sessions all the time but it’s rare to get such great insight and transparency from a customer and both parties left very statisfied. 🧢 - Last week I mentioned that new organisational changes had been announced. On Wednesday, after candidates for the new Director of Cloud Practice dropped out of the running, I was asked to step into the role on an interim-basis. While I had done a similiar role and with an almost identical title four years ago, this role is a bigger role and comes with the budget responsibility that my previous role did not. I was asked to come into the role on a interim basis with the longer-term intention of taking on the role if both I and the company can make sufficient provision over the next few months for some of my existing responsibilities. It is an exciting oppetunity and I look forward to getting back in the weeds with the cloud engineers and the customers they are supporting. 📈 - This weeks stats: ...