How Do We Scale the Dojo?
When launching a new dojo, we start with a few pilot teams. There’s an intentional pause after the pilots so we can assess what’s working, what adjustments we want to make, and how we can be most effective in the future. Often, after demonstrating success with the pilot teams, a question that comes up is “How do we scale the dojo?”
The first step in answering that question is to make sure you understand what is meant by “scaling”. Once you’ve done that, you can explore ways of answering the question.
“Scale” - You Keep Using That Word…
In our experience, these are the three most common meanings behind the question “How do we scale the dojo?”.
Get more teams through the dojo faster. This is the most common meaning behind the question. The logic goes like this - if the dojo can have a positive impact on 4 teams at a time, how can we scale up to 8 teams at a time (or some other multiple). The goal is to get more teams through the dojo over a given time span. There are always constraints in one form or another when the goal is to scale the dojo linearly. Those constraints include budget, availability of skilled coaches, available space (not a problem with remote/virtual dojos), and scheduling around teams’ projects and commitments.
Get “more” results without additional investment. Here, there’s a desire to get more results without increasing budgets, number of coaches, space, etc. Another way of saying this is the organization is looking for exponential returns. When the scaling question is asked this way, it’s often accompanied by suggestions for documenting best practices, creating playbooks that can be executed by less experienced coaches, reducing the time teams spend in the dojo, and reverting back to traditional forms of training (e.g., shorter workshops). These suggestions often risk diminishing the effectiveness of the dojo and are often at odds with the underlying principles that separate dojos from traditional training.
Coordination of dependencies across teams. This is the least interesting form of ‘scaling.’ Sometimes, the organization wants to bring multiple teams on a project into the dojo together to help manage the dependencies between the teams. In the worse cases, the dojo becomes another method for doing cross-team project management. We discourage organizations for using the dojo in this manner. The exception to this is when the organization wants to use the dojo to help eliminate the dependencies between the teams. For example, the primary goal for the teams might be to learn how to refactor a monolithic application into microservices. If the primary goal is learning, that’s an effective use of the dojo. If the primary goal is project management, it’s best to pass on those teams.
How Can You Achieve Your Organization’s Scaling Goals?
Now that we’ve established common meanings behind the question of scaling, let’s talk about strategies for meeting the goals behind the question.
With linear scaling (getting more teams through in a given time span), the strategy is simple. You need additional investment where you’re constrained (budget, number of skilled coaches, etc.). While it may not be easy to work through these constraints, the strategy for linear scaling is obvious.
Here are some approaches that may not be as obvious:
● Leverage improvements with platform teams. We always encourage organizations to consider bringing internal platform teams into the Dojo first. If you have teams building frameworks and tooling for the cloud, microservices, infrastructure as code, continuous delivery pipelines, UI frameworks, etc. you can achieve a multiplier effect without increasing your investment. This is an effective way of achieving exponential scaling. Improvements to the capabilities of your platform teams can lead to improvements across all teams using those platforms.
● Learn from teams and fix organizational constraints. As you’re working with teams in the dojo, you will identify constraints that are outside the teams’ ability to fix. Examples include wait times for rubber stamp approvals before a team can deploy to lower environments, restrictions around who can access information and who can talk to whom, waiting two weeks to have a new cloud environment available, etc. Leverage learning from working with individual teams to identify constraints that are likely affecting many (or even all) of your teams. Address those constraints and you’ve got another exponential return on your investment in the dojo.
● Halve the problem. This is a great aphorism we learned from Woody Zuill. When working with a problem ask yourself, “is there a way we can cut this problem in half?” Often there is. For example, if you’re looking for ways to scale your dojo linearly you’re probably assuming you have to get all of your teams through the dojo. Is that a valid assumption? What if you identified the potential impact of working with your teams and focused on the top half of them in terms of impact? Do you need to work with all of your teams?
Revisiting Linear Scaling
OK, maybe you read our comments above about linear scaling and you’re saying to yourself, “Really, the best you can offer is tell us to address the constraints?” In the near term, yes, that’s what we’re saying. However, there are some things you can do in the longer term if you have the patience for them.
● Grow coaches. Successful organizations grow their own coaches. The most common constraint when trying to scale linearly is a lack of skilled coaches. But here is the beauty of it - your organization already has people who can become effective coaches. It requires patience. At the first Dojo Consortium conference, Kent Beck talked about how he’s always considering how he can set up the next stage of the propagation of an idea. Part of that includes identifying people who can explain an idea to the next person. Or, Kent might say, “We’re doing this again in six weeks. Can you come in and help us teach it?”
● Embrace Social Learning Beyond the Dojo - The most effective dojos we we’ve been part encourage social learning that extends outside the dojo. Part of a team’s dojo experience might involve learning how to use tools like Slack. We’ve also helped organizations set up internal communities of practice and meetup types of events. In addition, the dojo could also sponsor internal conferences that encourage social learning and help foster networking connections within the organization.
When faced with the question “How do we scale the dojo?”, first seek to understand the context in which the question is being asked. Make sure you understand the motivation and meaning behind the question. From there, you can decide what strategies you want to adopt.
In our next post, we’ll talk about some of the anti-patterns we’ve seen when attempting to scale the dojo.