In my role as Head of Product at Comic Relief I currently have one overarching goal: to embed Product as a way of working. This is in order for Product to provide value to the organisation and it is underpinned by developing a high-performing team.
Building rednoseday.com on Drupal 8
As part of our objectives in 2016, we set out to solve a recurring problem at Comic Relief: how can we build an engaging, fast and secure fundraising campaign website – the likes of rednoseday.com and sportrelief.com – in a couple of months? How can we make sure that editors are able to create compelling landing pages that reach their different audiences?
Moving to Docker + PaaS + micro services
One of the goals we set ourselves for 2016 was the re-architecture of our Fundraising & registrations platform and moving to micro services. The team has been busy on that this year and the work will continue well into 2017 too. Here is a small rundown of our journey so far.
The FROST Disco
How we improved our email share function
Optimistic about our future optimization
At Comic Relief, we have 5 core values that we aim to achieve in everything we do; Bold, Creative, Fun, Trustworthy and Engaging. These values can be seen front-and-centre in our campaign activity, but we also embrace these values in how we optimize our digital product offering to ensure that, as well as hitting our campaign targets, we can continue to innovate.
Motivating your team – so simple, so powerful, so underestimated
Have you ever experienced a situation where your employer has done a bad job of motivating you? I can think of quite a few situations where an organisation’s attempt has failed, or even had the opposite effect. Despite this, the same motivation practices continue to be used, even though much more powerful solutions are available. Here’s a simple example of one.
The Friday 10-minute challenge
Every Friday at 5pm we have beers in the office. It’s nice, we clink, we pat each other on the back, we ask about plans for the weekend.
One Friday our Head of Design said:
“Hey, who fancies a 10-minute challenge?”
Running Blind – a metaphor for Agile Delivery
Imagine the situation. You’re in a race. A running race. But you have to wear a blindfold.
Mockery: not just for Red Nose Day
We’re big on mockery at Comic Relief. Usually it’s celebrities poking fun at themselves. Sometimes it’s for unit testing.
PHP in Comic Relief
I’m a little late in writing down some thoughts from my Friday at PHP Conference 2016. Fortunately the delay has given me even more to tell you about, as our progress with PHP marches on!
This post is a lightning overview of a couple of conference highlights we’ll be learning from, and our wider progress with PHP & related technology.
