Meet the Team: Toby, software development

Meg speaks to Toby about agile techniques, spitfire aeroplanes and being socially responsible.

Transcript

Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to Meet the Team podcast. My name is Meg and I work in our External Communications department. And I'm the host of this series.

 

I'm here today with Toby. Toby was one of the first people that I met here at Companies House as he was on the panel for my interview. And who better to welcome me?

 

Thank you for agreeing to be on this podcast. I'm looking forward to learning more about Toby and his role. How are you today?

 

Toby Maxwell-Lyte: I'm very well. Thank you for inviting me.

 

MH: You’re very welcome. Firstly, can you just tell me your role title and how you fit into the wider team here at Companies House?

 

TML: Okay, so my role title is the Head of Software Development Profession and so my focus is on the community of people with that skillset within Companies House.

 

So how does that fit into the wider picture? Our purpose is to actually build the software that then meets users’ needs, so that we can then make sure that citizens that need to use our services, whether that's companies who’re filing information with us or whether that's members of the public who want to get access to that information, are able to do that via our web services.

 

MH:  Thank you so much. So I'm not sure if you listened to the previous podcast, but we're going to start with some jokey questions to get going. So, cats or dogs?

 

TML: Dogs

 

MH: Tea or coffee?

 

TML: Coffee

 

MH: Introvert or extrovert?

 

TML: Extrovert

 

MH: Night owl or early bird?

 

TML: Early bird

 

MH: Same! Moving on to the proper questions, the serious stuff. Which piece of work are you really proud of?

 

TML: I think one of the pieces of work I'm most proud of is what we’ve built over the last couple of years. It’s been a project called the Streamlined Company Registration Service. This was a joint project where we worked closely with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs to make it easier for people who are setting up new companies.

So historically they would’ve had to tell Companies House that they wanted to incorporate their new company, and then they would independently have needed to register with HMRC for corporation tax and vat and PAYE.

 

So we've built a service with them that enables people who want to set up their own companies to be able to do that all in one go now, so they're not having to tell multiple different government departments the names and addresses of directors over and over again. It's made it streamlined.

 

MH: I think that's interesting because it's actually something that I've thought about. And thought, isn't it great how you just do one thing and then HMRC automatically know about it? It's all these things that have to get done but people don't realise. It's fixed before it’s broken almost?

 

TML: Absolutely and that wasn't always the case and I think it's important that we, as government, work across those sorts of organisational boundaries to make sure that we’re providing services for citizens that are user-friendly. You know, they're not customers. They can't choose, they're obliged to do it. So it's important that we make it as easy as possible and reduce the friction.

 

MH: Talking of making it as easy as possible, which brings us on really nicely to One Team Gov. I know you do a lot of work in that area. Could you tell me a little bit about it?

 

TML: Yeah, One Team Gov formed about 2 years ago. There were a couple of people who were together at a conference and they thought policy and digital were separate things. And wouldn't life be better if those were more joined up? So they formed One Team Gov which is a group of people who want to make things better across government. And it’s kind of as vague as that really, it's about doing things well.

 

So it's working across boundaries. Working across government boundaries or whether it's working across teams within organizations or you know, even globally. So there was a One Team Goes Global unconference event which I helped at, and we had people from over the world. About 40 countries represented.

 

I found it really interesting to learn from, say people in Canada, about the challenges they were facing. We have our Companies House register here, and in Canada because they have 11 states, they have 11 equivalents of Companies House. And it was interesting to hear the challenges.

 

There's often people who have solved the problem you're facing already and if you talk to other people you can get their input, and it's nice to be able to get that from other people and also to give back.

 

MH: Thank you Toby that’s great, can we go back to your role? What made you decide that it was the career for you?

 

TML: I always enjoyed playing around with computers. My dad was always quite keen on buying shiny new kit. So I got exposure to it and got to play with that. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with a career.

 

So ended up doing a degree in computer science and then naturally went into the world of software development. I quite like working with people. I enjoy the problem-solving side of things, you know, the extrovert question earlier comes into the sort of working with people and that sort of stuff.

 

I like working with software developers and helping join the gap in terms of making sure that we build software that meets users’ needs. I enjoy that sort of stuff, the human side of the role.

 

MH: You sound like you’re really rewarded by your job. Is that true?

 

TML: Yeah. I enjoy it and I'm always looking to improve. You know, I find it satisfying. There's nothing more satisfying than being able to build just enough software so that you can make peoples’ lives a bit better. And yeah, it's great.

 

MH: Talking about making peoples’ lives better, can you tell me a bit about the social responsibility work that you've been doing in digital?

 

TML: One of the benefits of being in Companies House is that we get a given number of volunteering days that we’re allowed to use each year to help with the wider community.

 

And something I've been involved with is working with a local organization called City Hospice. So that's a hospice in Cardiff. It's a “bedless” hospice, so people don't actually stay in beds, it's like a day centre for people who might be going through different cancer therapy or they might be experiencing other things which they're going through.

 

This provides a nice environment for people to get out of their house and go and socialise with other people. So what we do there is, once a month we get volunteers from the digital teams to go along and meet with these people and help them with their digital skills.

 

For example, I went and I met a really nice man. He said to me “I've heard that I can watch videos of Spitfire airplanes flying over Cardiff Bay. Apparently that happened in the 1980s and I'd really like to see a video of that. What can I do?” So I thought okay. So this must be YouTube, so introduced him to that and no doubt he's now gone down in the whole history of watching those videos.

 

MH: I know that we've done some equipment donations as well, is that to City Hospice?

 

TML: So that's to some of the local primary schools. Obviously the older our equipment gets, it comes to the point where it's no longer up to scratch for our software development needs and general user needs. Whereas local schools really value that kind of thing. So I know that we've also donated some of our equipment that we don't use anymore to local schools, which is making their lives a bit better.

 

MH: Can you tell me, are we using any new or creative processes or attitudes towards work and output?

 

TML: So the primary way that we do our software development is by using agile techniques. That's not particularly new in the software world, but we're doing more and more of that, which is breaking everything down into small chunks and delivering it as often as we possibly can to meet users’ needs. And then getting feedback on it so that we can iterate on those services.

 

We've recently created a platform team here who can help us with some of the more automation of the software release processes. We're moving towards a continuous integration mindset where all the developers code. They combine their code with each other as often as possible to make sure that it’s as straightforward as possible and easy for people to work together.

 

And then it’s breaking that stuff down. It's really small chunks so that it gets delivered really frequently because more often, the smaller the chunks the lower the risk and the better we can meet user’s needs.

 

MH: I know I'm repeating myself, but it's just one of those things that you fix before it’s broken. People take so much for granted and you get it to this stage, that you have no idea the work that's gone into it to get to there.

 

TML: Yeah, but I think it's about the smaller the chunks the lower the risks. Yeah, and that means if you release a small piece of software, there's not too much to fix if it's gone wrong. It’s really important that we make sure that we can do that.

 

MH: Can you tell me a little bit about Innovation time?

 

TML: So historically there's always been quite a strong focus on projects, which is rightly so. We’re ultimately spending public money. So that needs to go in the most efficient and effective ways possible.

 

What we've realized is, we've got a large group of bright and intelligent people and we need to harness the innovation and creativity side of their roles rather than just purely heads down to the grindstone.

 

We introduced Innovation time which gives people the opportunity to spend half a day a week on doing whatever they want, that they think will make things better.

 

So an example of one of the things that came out of that was, in our culture community, one of the things that people liked most was meeting people from other areas. People can register for ‘curious coffee’ and then you get randomly paired up with somebody from another directorate. And you can go and have a coffee with them and just get to meet.

 

MH: Being the head of the development software profession means…

 

TML: For me it's about enabling people to grow within their roles and develop themselves as a person, so that they can become an even better software developer.

 

It's getting people across the different teams. We’ve got 13 software development teams. It's getting them to share their great ideas with each other so that if one team over here is doing great stuff, the other teams are aware of that and can learn and gain from that.

 

How can we make sure that we're doing high-quality software, that's easy to maintain? Which then means that we can add new features to it easily and quickly without incurring technical debt and pain that is then difficult to iterate in the future. So it's about trying to simplify that whole process.

 

MH: You definitely strike me as a very people-focused worker and person generally, which is really lovely. I don't think from the outset on face value you'd think software developer as a people focused person. Rightly or wrongly?

 

TML: It’s critical. I mean everybody works in teams. We have to work together. You know, you've got that stereotype, but it's important that our people, are happy and engaged. You absolutely need that to have the most effective way of developing software and get the most out of it.

 

MH: Well, thank you so much that brings us to a nice end. Have you enjoyed?

 

TML: Yeah, it's been really good.

 

MH: So thank you everyone for listening to this podcast. In case you missed the last episode of our Meet the Team series, we spoke with Oceanne last month about her role as an Interaction Designer. You can find all of our podcasts on Soundcloud or wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you again. Bye.