This is my reflection on my 2024. It’s for me but you can come along for a few minutes.

First reflection, why have I not blogged more this year!  Simple answer its been hectic but I feel like I could have reflected on a more regular basis the 12 month journey.

Second reflection, what a year!

By the end of 2023 we signed the contract with Drieam (who support the learner, course and order management platform called eduframe.com) and Instructure (who host the learning platform called Canvas https://www.instructure.com) to help us deliver the new Short Course Platform. It had taken 6 months of procurement and legal wrangling to get the contract sorted but in December 2023 it was finally signed. The short course platform will allow the public to browse courses via a web site, create an account, pay (if costed), enrol, learn, maybe get a digital badge and hopefully come back and repeat the process.

The platform aims to emulate a lot of the learnings from the core VLE projects including a consistent user experience, replacing laborious and admin heavy workarounds and having a clear purpose/strategy/vision. It has been a gap in the learning eco-system for a while and we have seen schools/depts bend tools and policies to meet their needs.

Interestingly with the current issues in HE we are starting to see a few other institutions spin up similar platforms. When we started this journey 2 years ago only a few examples existed but with institutions keen to explore additional revenue tracks we have seen similar platforms come online but that’s a different blog.

Like any new service we are starting fresh, which is great! But as soon as we started to update stakeholders and share the news more widely that we had signed a contract then comes the big questions…..when will it be available? Can we use it? How do I use it? Is it compliant? Will the learners like it? What is a learner? Can I show it to my friends? What is a short course?

It can feel like a landslide but I am lucky to work with people who are very supportive, open to ideas and like me love a plan(ner).The service isn’t just one new service, its 4 new platforms, training, guidance, marketing, communication, stakeholder engagement (one off and ongoing), terms of use, legal, compliant handling, data protection, accessibility, reporting (another new service so make that 5), terminology and the list goes on and on.

Spinning up a new service involves working with colleagues inside the department and making sure we are all confident or if not approachable to ask questions. Sounds easy but it’s probably the toughest part, the people who are the face of change need to speak the same language or stakeholders will lose confidence pretty quickly and that can cause tension in teams (who said what, why, when, did they not read the 1000 page memo).

Change agents also need to change. The ability to listen and change what we have thought about, developed or delivered is also key but with the caveat it must be based on facts. I listen to sports podcasts and was really intrigued by a football manager saying the team needed to focus on the team’s core goals (playing good football) and not be driven by the edge (bad passes and mistakes). That edge in service delivery can sometimes be a blocker to progress especially when creating a new service. Evaluating the use case and categorising it is key to understanding impact and priority especially when deadline is involved.

Don’t get me wrong use cases generated by stakeholders need to be listened to and evaluated but it’s the teams requirement to review and categories. Sometimes its not popular with stakeholders however I am a firm believer that services are never perfect. They evolve as does the requirements, the users (all of them) and the underlying technology. Services deliver to the masses and aim to meet all requirements however I have struggled to work on a service that doesn’t have a wish list or a product development roadmap.

The quicker you get comfortable with the edge the better.

My role in the project is technical lead but I feel more like a troubleshooter and negotiator. I have had to get to grips with 4 new bit of tech (content management system, payment portal, new VLE, a website developed on Next.js, a user provisioning tools) and help design a 5^th (data reporting tool), negotiate with others use of the tools, design, onboarding for early adopter, project timelines and I am mentally knackered. Thankfully (again) a good team and me being very open about forgetting stuff and asking for reminders or checking my notes (which have merged into teams chats) has helped keep me on track. A technical lead sounds like someone who knows it all and I don’t but that’s ok. My role is offering workflows and options to a problem whilst speaking to the experts to help me map it out. Last Monday I had no clue on GA4 and now we have a plan to debug tags. Last Jan I started to play with APIs of the new platforms and now not a day goes by when I don’t have postman open and I am trying to figure out something.

2024 has been a blast but it’s been difficult. The projects have been challenging and that’s not just the tech. My confidence has taken a bit of a bashing along the way but its not personal. I will look back when we finally go live in May 2025 and think 2024 is the year we made a lot of decisions, I learned a little bit more about me and I am sharing some with you as it may help and remembe0 for any service its not the destination as there is never a destination, its just one big journey.

Dec 23, 2024

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