Background

The forum for operational development at Visual Labs is called Dojo. These sessions are held every Tuesday morning for one and a half hours. Originally launched in January 2023, Dojo was a half-day event held every two weeks and could only be attended in person.Participation in Dojo sessions is optional, although certain colleagues are often expected to attend due to their expertise. The topics of Dojo are determined by quarterly goals, and the exact agenda is set by management. These topics cover a wide range of areas, aiming to contribute to organizational development.

Why is it necessary?

Despite being a small organization, we work in distinctly defined technological areas (ERP, CRM, BI) that often serve the same clients. It is essential to have a common forum where we can gain insights into each other’s work or the company’s operations (e.g., ERP or BI colleagues are welcome at a CRM hackathon). This allows for collective thinking about how Visual Labs can develop as an organization.

Topics Covered So Far

Among others, the following topics have been discussed in Dojo sessions:

• Using Azure DevOps (see: Optimization from Top to Bottom: How We Structure Backlogs at Visual Labs, Part One)
  • Feature delivery process
  • Managing work items
  • Defining work items
  • Handling statuses
• Refining financial planning and billing processes
• Hackathon for improving our internal CRM
• Brainstorming on the development of our increasingly cramped office
• Solution-seeking:
  • For technical challenges
  • For broadly defined, exciting client needs
• Power Platform Starter Kit
  • Launching the PowerPlatform Center of Excellence (CoE) Starter Kit
  • Agile sprint review and planning ceremonies for the Visual Labs enhancement of the PowerPlatform Starter Kit ([[CoE+]]), where we also tested our agile wings 🙂
• Customer relationship and competency training for POs, conducted by our regular coach, Klára Sugta
• Knowledge sharing on the following topics:
  • Customer visits
  • Project launches

What Has Dojo Given Us?

Key achievements:

• Creation of a Dojo Handbook that defines our main processes and operations, which we keep up to date.
• Further development of the Microsoft-developed Power Platform Center of Excellence Toolkit [[CoE+]], cataloging Azure resources, DevOps projects, and areas that can be assigned to teams and users.
• Strengthening and integrating the competencies outlined in the Competency Matrix into our daily routines.
• Introduction of monthly financial planning with weekly tracking.
• Development of our own CRM system (based on Dynamics 365 Sales and Project Operations, in collaboration with CoE+).

Other Forums for Organizational Development

• Team Retrospectives
  • While Dojo generally deals with cross-departmental or company-wide topics identified by management, retrospectives at the team level focus on system-level improvements in individual collaboration.
  • In the future, it will be important to create a development backlog (Kaizen) to provide an overarching view of areas needing improvement, to which initiatives can be assigned and receive the necessary buy-in and resources.
• 1on1s
  • The most straightforward opportunity to foster bottom-up ideas is through 1on1s, where topics can ripple up to management level.

The Future of Dojo

Dojo will continue to be the main forum for organizational development and will remain optional. We aim to facilitate participation in organizational development asynchronously and ensure that more written records of Dojo discussions are kept. Often, colleagues cannot attend sessions on topics they find interesting or do not find it worthwhile to sit through the entire discussion but would find a "tl;dr" version useful.If you want more information about our Dojo sessions or the topics discussed, follow our blog, as new articles on these topics are continuously published. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact us!