This is a resource for people who find themselves looking for examples and links about working in the open and agile communication. These are the links I often share with people when I do talks, workshops or seminars. I used to keep all of this in a Google doc, but that was unwieldy; so I’ve followed my own examples from Doing presentations and Doing weeknotes, and made it into a web page. Why not collect the set?
As usual, your feedback, comments and suggestions are very welcome. Email me: giles (at) gilest.org.
Buy the book: The agile comms handbook is a short, lively guide to practical creative communication about work in progress.
The National Science and Media Museum
This museum’s blog is a treasure trove of insights. From the home page you get a sense of the breadth of the organisation’s work, but you can drill down into helpful categories like Behind the scenes and Our collection, and lose yourself in years and years’ worth of updates. What a wonderful archive for stakeholders, new staffers, and museum visitors alike.
Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science
I spent a lot of time working with this team during 2024/25, and I admire their commitment to openness. This blog helps them share progress, and communicate directly with a wide range of stakeholders and interested parties. Sometimes the content gets very technical, but that’s fine - this is technical work. Most of the audience wants to see that sort of detail. There are also plenty of occasions to post things with wider appeal.
Enabling digital identity
After a hesitant start, this central government team have hit their stride with regular updates about their work. The tone is informal but professional, advisory but not commanding. Theirs is another quite dense technical field - they’re doing a good job of explaining it all to experts and non-experts alike. See this list of DOs and DON’Ts, for example.
Department for Education design histories
A classic of the genre, you might say, and still going strong. Still a terrific example of openness, about things like removing content that doesn't work, A/B testing, small iterations, and loads more. A notebook and reference library for future colleagues.
Digital prevention services portfolio design histories
An NHS team - which I’m currently part of - documenting its thinking, decision-making, and design strategy as it goes along. There’s a great deal of excellent showing the thing here (this is just one example, there are many others).
A GDS Story
My final project before I left GDS - a compilation of history highlights, assembled as simple pages of text, bullets, links and pictures. Designed to meet the need where people say: “But how did it all start in the first place?” I’m happy that for a while, someone continued to add to it after I left.
The dxw playbook
An agency that wears its heart on its collective sleeve, and publishes its team manual on the open internet. As it says on the homepage: “This is a reference for who we are and the way we do things.” Not just useful for existing staff, but also useful for people who might want to join the staff in future.
💡 For more on team memory, see How teams remember
Fragments, by FF Studio and Essex County Council
A brilliant piece of official communication. This research could have ended up as a dull PDF that no-one ever reads - instead, it became an eye-catching, readable, shareable web page that makes its important points with clarity and visual style. Wonderful stuff.
Radar mailing list by Studio D
A global research studio with an utterly unique voice and style. They link to things you don’t see anywhere else. They write up stories you’re never going to hear about anywhere else. They use black-and-white photography to striking effect. Mailing list updates are rare, but always compelling.
Our mistakes log by Givewell
Givewell is an American non-profit that aims to help people make the most of their charitable donations. It maintains this amazing page of mistakes it has made, and lessons learned from each one - I’ve not seen anything like this from any other organisation, anywhere. A very impressive act of openness.
Extract planning data alpha, by the Digital Planning team in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). These are entertaining, informative and very readable weeknotes about a fascinating piece of work. I particularly like the lessons learned, and the animated gifs of real works-in-progress (see week 7 for example).
Inside the archive, by the British Film Institute
I worked with the BFI to help get this up and running, and the team have, as they say, absolutely smashed it. These weeknotes have their own unique magazine-ish style, and have genuinely helped the BFI to open up about its work behind the scenes.
Weeknotes from the digital team at Natural Resources Wales
A team using weeknotes to document what they do and what they learn, week in, week out, for two and a half years and counting. Admirable because they've shown commitment, humour, and humility. I love the no-frills simplicity of this archive of memories. Also, sometimes they publish things in Welsh.
NHS notes, by Frankie Roberto
Frankie is a colleague, and a much-admired writer of thoughtful personal reflections on his work in the NHS. Other colleagues have been inspired by Frankie’s notes, and started writing notes of their own.
Sickle cell project weeknotes
A small team writing project-specific notes for just 13 weeks. This is how you let stakeholders see through the silos, and observe work from afar without getting caught in the weeds of detail. Nicely done.
💡 For more about weeknotes, see Doing weeknotes
I’d like to hear about it, and add the best examples to this list.
Send me a note! giles (at) gilest.org