Weeknotes #5 — Planning anyone?
This week I felt like I got my mojo back. I finally had a routine, I have done exercise six days a week and was even able to watch Bridgerton. However, it was not an easy week at all. Let’s dive into it, shall we?
What I did this week?
Welcome day — I spent my Tuesday at Parkinson’s UK welcome day, which is a great day to get to know the charity better. Even though I have been in the charity for a while now, I have found it useful and learned a new thing or two about Parkinson’s.
Project plan template — This week my team had a very loooong session on team’s projects. The conversation from that team session made me wonder — why do we need project planning?
In general, I believe that a project planner is great for making sure you don’t forget issues, risks and success points during the projects itself. Rarely a project plan goes according to plan, and a good plan is a one that helps you prepare for different situations. Lastly, when working with other people and teams, a project plans help to communicate work that is done, and a GREAT project plan help to build collaboration between teams.
The problem, like in every tool, is when we put the document before people’s needs and forget that the document should serve the people, not the other way around. In addition, we need to remember that we can still fail with a project plan, so we also need reflections or retrospective mechanism to improve the way we work (and plan projects).
So will I use a project plan for my project? Always trying to. If you have good project planners to share, especially around data projects, let me know!
Brushed my Python skills a bit — We are experimenting with NLP at Parkinon’s UK, so I decided to see if I can create a colab notebook for Word Clouds. It was fun to do some coding again, even if it’s been a while and I have to brush some of the things I learned again…
Community calls! On the Data Collective front, we are starting forthnightly community calls! If you are part or the collective, join me on Friday for a rant for bette future call! I love rant for a better future methodology, so if you are intrigued, join me!
And my new hobby….
