Weeknotes: 16th September 2019
This week I decided to try keeping weeknotes.
There are a few reasons for this:
- I want to practice writing prose more
- I want to step back and think about what I’ve done each week
- It seems to be a hip trend and I’m a sucker for trends (particularly when I can own the data!)
My key priority this week was introduced on Monday and resolved on Friday: implementing cross-domain analytics in our public-facing services. There’s been a lot of conversation about this in the media recently, and I won’t go into it, but it’s worth noting that this doesn’t cover any more information than we were already using.
Beyond that I’ve been supporting colleagues with the implementation of our new permissions model for Deputy Reporting. This has been a long process, because we’re working with an existing app with lots of active users and we can’t get in their way. We’re working on the final issues now though, and hopefully will have the core functionality in production next week.
At the end of the week, I started moving our build system from Gulp to Webpack. This has meant restructuring lots of our assets, which is ultimately a good thing, but a little more change than I would have liked. I think ultimately I have to dive in and not be scared to mix things up.
Format
As I understand it there isn’t really an agreed format for weeknotes, but I like to have a structure in things like this. It makes it wasier to write, read and compare.
Each weeknote will start with “This week I…” where I’ll give a headline about the key things I’ve done.
That’ll be followed by a general overview of the week: some common themes or just things I want to remember.
After the overview I’m reserving some space to dive into a topic more deeply. This section might include technical areas I’ve explored, some delivery practices we’ve trialled or something in policy that’s taken my interest.
Finally, we’ll end with a little bullet-point list of single sentences covering all the little things I’ve done during the week.
Summary
- Updated our Google Analytics reporting to supply centralised data to GDS
- Prototyped how we can improve our Cookie settings to give maximum clarity and flexibility to users
- Investigated how much money we could save by switching Serve OPG to a Serverless Postgres database or DynamoDB (a lot!)
- Started switching Deputy Reporting to Webpack
- Supported colleagues in implementing new permissions structure in Deputy Reporting
- Started writing weeknotes, hopefully I’ll get better at them soon!