Hailey Lee

6.50 AM

I try hard to hide from my dog's poking nose. When I cannot ignore it anymore, I wake up and open the door to the backyard so that she can take a walk around and finish her business. I race back to bed.

7.30 AM

Okay, if I push snooze again, then I will be late to my first meeting in the office. Quickly take a shower, down a strawberry smoothie and a poached egg for breakfast. Check the calendar and realise today is Thursday, which means smart casual will go okay in the office.

8.30 AM

Depart home. I am waiting for Northern Express bus at Albany station to Auckland CBD. Bump into a friend from university who is currently working in an IT company. We have a chat about how things are going and how her project is progressing. Plan a lunch date with her next week.

It's always fun to listen to how IT companies are working. Hearing the differences between working on projects in the banking industry's internal project vs working in a client-driven project.

9.30 AM

Arrive in office. Saying good morning to people here and there, I get to my desk and prepare for the day. Our squad area has a great view, so we can see people walking in Takutai square and a cruise ship docked.

After logging into Skype, I ask our squad if anyone wants to join me for coffee before a stand-up meeting. We usually go to the floor that has a manual coffee machine and makes a latte to start the day with a caffeine boost. 

The ordinary business hour starts at 8:30 in Westpac, but I prefer avoiding peak traffic hours, so I begin roughly at 9:30. But some of our squad members start at 7:30 AM. It's nice to have flexibility in choosing our work routine and balance with personal life.

9.45 AM

The first meeting is our squad stand-up. We are gathered in front of a large whiteboard that has all our user stories we need to work through for the next two weeks (yes, we are working in SCRUM). Have a quick recap on what we did yesterday, share what each of us is planning for today, and if we've got any issues/risks/dependencies for work to be delivered to our users and bank.

It is easy to take a daily stand-up as a trivial event, but actually, this is the most important time in our everyday work life. This is the time for checking in with the whole squad and re-focusing our work, going through tasks to do and also acknowledging the value we are creating. We continuously try to see our work in a user perspective and understand our ultimate goal is to deliver value to Westpac people and customers.

11.00 AM

I am in the middle of a 2-hour session with our key stakeholders to refine requirements on the new feature in our system. The business analyst usually runs a regular meeting from gathering and refining requirements, presenting possible options to implement which has been discovered and reviewed by developers, carrying over feedback from stakeholders to the delivery team, and iterating the process.

As a developer and a service owner, I am representing our squad & the overall crafts done by the squad.

12.00 PM

It's lunchtime. I usually book my lunchtime in the calendar so that I can secure some time to have fresh air, have lunch, have a casual catch up, and work urgent queries if there are any.

Today I grabbed a cup of broccoli soup and a wrap from the cafeteria and go for a walk with a couple of other developers. 

1.30 PM

Having a tribe (a tribe is a group of squads working collectively towards shared strategy and goals) level of catch-up with other service owners and share each squads delivery and updates.

3.00 PM

All squad members move to a meeting room to discuss a solution and how we will implement recent business requirements changes in our system. We call this meeting a design and discovery session, which usually starts from clarifying problem domains and ends up with follow up action items. I need to update some user stories and catch up with relevant teams that we have a dependency on.

4.00 PM

Working on the potential people list who will need access to the system as we are heading to launch a new software product with a change analyst. Based on people’s roles and business units, a change and communication plan is created.

6.20 PM

Just washed my keep-cup and turned off the laptop. I packed my stuff and walked to the Tepid Batha for a swim. Did belong to a gym but didn’t use it for several months so have recently started swimming, which is much more fun!

7.30 PM

On my way home while watching/listening to some interesting podcasts. Podcasts are my favourite way to keep following trends and new releases, especially for the Microsoft product suite.

9.00 PM

Had a long dinner and chitchat with my family, a quick walk with my dog and came home. It's time for some entertainment. After an hour phone call with my friend in South Korea, I read a novel that I haven't finished since last week.

12.10 AM

It's time to sleep. I turn off the light but still holding my phone to browse new video clips from Youtubers I subscribe. Then I remember that I haven't checked tomorrow’s meeting schedule. I will have a look in Outlook calendar, prioritise my works and leave a quick note.

12.40 AM

Start snoring.