My weeknotes — wc 03/02/2020. Good afternoon, I hope you all had a…
By: Hidayat Deen
Tags: Apprenticeship, Local Government, Apprentice, Weeknotes

Good afternoon, I hope you all had a productive week.

This week:

- A tiring but productive Monday was followed by a fast paced Tuesday. Jay and I met up and had our first go at refining the backlog for the last sprint of developing Pipeline. I have spoken about it before but for those who don’t know, Pipeline is a service that lets local authorities share information about projects. It encourages open doors for collaboration and seeing as project information is shared, organisations can learn from one another.

We have limited time with our developers and so Jay and I thought about how to best utilize that time, by creating and refining the final backlog. I think I’m doing well at doing the ‘Definition of Done’ for each task.

- It’s National Apprenticeship Week this week and we’ve celebrated it here at Hackney Council in multiple ways. One of the ways I contributed towards this week was presenting alongside fellow apprentices. We spoke about our journey’s as apprentices, our setbacks, key takeaways so far and our future aspirations. Last year I shied away from this opportunity but this year I found the confidence to present in front of Councillor Williams, the apprenticeship team and fellow colleagues and apprentices.

The team had the opportunity to meet up before, to prepare but as I was at college, I couldn’t attend — only making me more nervous. In the end I thought that if I do present, “what’s the worst that can happen?” — a question I always ask myself before presenting. I also reminded myself that this week is to celebrate us apprentices so why don’t I go out there and represent all us apprentices the best I can. After the feedback given from a handful of people, it’s fair to say we did a great job as a collective. Well done to Sam Clare, Jessica Long, Cleo Lewis for sharing their experiences as apprentices. And a huge thank you to Ryan Bates who helped steer the team with planning for the presentation at a short notice.

- Then came Wednesday, Hackney’s apprentices awards event. A night full of registering people, photo booth images, lovely refreshments and inspiring stories. Oh and of course the awards. We swept the award ceremony with the amount of shortlisted apprentices and managers we had from HackIT, I’m proud of you all. I’m proud of my old manager, Philippa for getting shortlisted. I’m grateful for all the lessons you’ve taught me and I hope I have done you proud through the work I have produced. I also want to congratulate Susan for winning the Manager of the Year award, well deserved.

- I met up with Karim about the Procurement User Journey Trello board that I had created. The purpose of it was to capture the journey a user would go through and the tasks associated with that process — each process differs, dependent on the value of the contract. I have been given feedback and will be rolling it out to test it soon.

Quote: “There might not be a tomorrow, so do it all today”

Question: What motivates you in life the most?

Thank you for reading, I hope you all have a restful weekend.