Monthnote: July 2024
This month the NHS App team had its quarterly planning session. I answered a lot of questions about the NHS App from a lot of different people. And we have a new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
Why we plan 2–3 months ahead
At the NHS App we do our quarterly planning approx 2–3 months before the quarter actually starts.
When I tell other people this they’re a bit surprised — they’d expect planning for the October to December period to happen at the end of September.
The main reason we do our planning earlier than most is because so many other teams have dependencies on the NHS App to deliver their services. We found that if we didn’t have a plan of our own, other teams would happily create one for us!
But there are other benefits too. In particular, you have more time for resolving blockers and dependencies — that’s especially helpful if you need to bring in some extra people or specific skills.
Obviously, a quarterly plan generated so far in advance needs to be reviewed and revised over time, but that is just good practice. Personally, I like having time to consider the plan between coming up it and executing it.
Quarterly planning
It being July we created our draft plan for October to December. This was just the second time we had come together in person for this event — previous editions had been done on Teams calls.
The warm-up exercise at the start of Day 1 was an obvious highlight. Teams created a mascot using fruit and veg. It had strong Lambeth Country Show vegetable sculpture vibes.
And on Day 2 we asked teams to come up with ways in which we could do smaller, more frequent releases using the Purpose to Practice workshop structure. From a very long list of ideas we’ve narrowed it down to a more manageable set of initiatives.
But the main reason we came together was to agree priorities and realistic plans for the October to December period. Similar to last time, we started on paper then built the plans in Jira afterwards.
Roadmap update
I should have updated the NHS App public roadmap in April/May but the budget-related reprioritisation and the pre-election period stopped that from happening. I managed to publish it in mid-July, and 2 days later this blog post from Ross Ferguson about public roadmaps started getting shared.
Meeting ICBs, GPs and NHS App users
I completed the product manager triathlon in July by attending a regional meeting, a GP webinar and an all-day session with NHS App users.
At the East of England PEP Delivery Group I shared the NHS App roadmap with attendees from secondary care in the region. They asked some great questions about supporting multiple languages on the NHS App and how we are promoting the NHS App to the public.
I also shared the NHS App roadmap at the monthly Digital Primary Care webinar. This audience was particularly interested in proxy access and care plans, and one attendee flagged an issue with how prescriptions work in the NHS App.
I visited Brighton on a hot, sunny day to sit in an air conditioned office all day and meet the NHS Sussex Digital and Data People’s Panel — members of the public with an interest in digital health. I had a series of informal chats and picked up a load of great insights, such as:
- A screenreader user showed me how he was able to crash the App with a ‘scrub’ gesture.
- A couple of trans users explained their frustrations with digital and data in health.
- Advocates for older users talked about how they teach these people to use the NHS App and what they need from it.
It was a great day out and I’m immensely grateful to everyone who organised it.
Meeting Streeting*
New secretary of state Wes Streeting addressed Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England (NHSE) staff on Monday 8 July.
A couple of things he said stood out to me:
- He wants to be challenged. When there are multiple ways in which to address a problem he wants to hear about them.
- He and Amanda Pritchard both emphasised that that DHSC and NHSE were working hand in hand.
It was nice to see Chris ‘Next Slide Please’ Whitty sat behind them.
I was at Skipton House the day after the 2019 election for an audience with Matt Hancock. I wonder how many more of these I will clock up by the end of my career.
* I didn’t actually meet him, I just couldn’t resist the rhyming heading.
My cultural highlights of the month
- Allen Ginsberg’s Howl performed with a live jazz band at Wilton’s Music Hall. Pretentious, moi? Actually great fun.
- Jimmy Anderson’s last Test Match. What a cricketer.
- The third series of Slow Horses, despite my favourite character — London — appearing less in this series than previous ones.
