Weeknotes 20/01/2019 – Week 20

Great progress around our product ‘homepage’ Should be live this week all being well in testing. This change brings to the fore our extra accounts which are a hidden gem of our account. Unlike most fintech providers who have built simple logical bots ours are actual accounts with sort code and account numbers with the ability to use Direct Debits. They will form a big part of product going forwards. Another big project we have on to move to realtime transactions is rumbling on but the end is near now and I can’t wait to get that shipped as it opens up the possibility of change is so many more areas.

We have more hiring to be done in UX and Product following on from the two jobs we advertised last week. We are after someone who is better at the numbers side of product management than I am. An area I do need to improve on but I have a lot on elsewhere to have had chance to focus on it. That feels like an easy excuse though. Must grasp the spreadsheet nettle.

A new starter last week is making great strides in changing how we make things. Making me feel a lot more relaxed about the amount of things we have to do. Also I know I am going to learn a lot from them.

One of my major tasks at the moment is writing a mobile strategy. Our current app is far beyond or web interface due to choices made way before I joined. We have resource and focus challenges to address and this makes our decision on where to go with mobile far from the simple platitude of ‘mobile first’. Our customer base is also far from mobile app first at the moment. Due to our feature lacking app or the comfort of customers sticking to the web? If I was better at numbers (and had the chance to speak to way more customers) I might know that.

Still struggling to get back in to reading. I abandoned Change Agent by Daniel Suarez and have switched to 84K by Claire North. Struggling to get to grips with the writing style but about half a dozen chapters in so must stick with it.

My half marathon training is ramping up now. I managed two 8.2k runs to work and a 12.6k run on Saturday. First run up Ringinglow in about 18 months and it was snowy and hellish. I felt like I was going in reverse but managed to get up it eventually. Need to run up that hilly bastard every Saturday from now until April now in the hope I can increase my pace and stamina. Repeat, repeat, repeat to get better numbers.

Leave a Reply