September with Perago (in Swansea!)

As you might have guessed from the title, I am indeed finally in Swansea! I spent the first half of September in London and the rest of the month in Swansea but I’m still working from home, due to COVID-19, but it’s great to have a change of scenery. It’s also been incredibly helpful with my brief on finding a potential new office space as I was able to go to viewings and have more enquiries in terms of spaces and location. I’ve been able to adapt quickly despite the change in location and I’m looking forward to meeting the team in person.

This month’s been really busy, but here’s some highlights:

• I’ve been involved with the comms for the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS), including developing its website, blog posts and social media with Victoria. It’s been really interesting to see first-hand how important communication, both internal and external is, especially in something as important as CDPS. We’ve been considering the best ways to share information and work openly, and we’ve been doing most of this through social media and regular blog posts keeping stakeholders and interested viewers/third parties up to date. We’ve continued to work on a website that will hold more information on the fantastic work being done through the Centre. For now, have a look at a blog post that welcomes CDPS for more information. I’ve been given a lot of responsibility in terms of essentially being the ‘blog manager’ for the Centre and I’m responsible for making sure they are in on time, making sure there’s a Welsh translation available, proofreading and publishing them. This has allowed me to be more efficient in my work and has definitely put my organising skills to use!

• I managed to sit in a couple discoveries and alphas this month along with a couple of show & tells to do with the knowledge hub within CDPS. This was fascinating to witness as I was able to see the theories I had learnt from the gov.uk service manual being used practically, giving me more experience and knowledge. They are also using agile ways of working and focusing on user needs which I’ll hopefully be able to implement myself in the near future.

• I’ve been working the team in leading multiple workshops with a client in order to reach a conclusion as business analysts. It’s been really interesting to see how people in one organisation can have different thoughts and preferences (according to their job role of course) and how these thoughts can be tied together to form one site map. I’ve been able to see how extremely helpful doing one on one workshops are when trying to form a conclusion and as we reflect on these, it’s then easier to pull these thoughts and ideas together. As well as writing and talking to one another, we’ve used Miro to help us capture all the information which we can then share with the necessary people for even further discussions and to develop possible outcomes.

All in all, it’s been a great month with lots to come in October like introducing a new member of the team (blog post coming soon!) as well as working on more exciting projects.