A Better Center of Excellence

Many organizations attempt to manage knowledge by creating Centers of Excellence (CoE). A CoE is supposed to develop skills and best practices (or leading practices), codify the knowledge around those skills and practices, and blast that knowledge out to the rest of the organization. In our experience, CoEs seldom work. They do not deliver on the expected outcomes and are eventually abandoned.  

Dojos can deliver on the intent of centers of excellence. Let's look at CoEs, how they typically struggle, and how dojos address these issues.

Spreading Knowledge

The idea behind CoEs is that once we have a core group of people with 'the knowledge', they can simply 'go forth and deliver the knowledge.' As Dion referenced in our recent webinar, knowledge is very difficult to codify and externalize.

Instead of trying to package up knowledge and hand it off to teams, Dojos amplify knowledge creation through frequent application of new skills with teams. This application of new skills is not only done in the context of their daily work, making it stickier, but also in a safe environment with coaching support. Instead of trying to codify knowledge and pass it from person to person, dojos create learning experiences where participants have the opportunity to create knowledge for themselves.

Separating Centers of Excellence by Skill

Many CoEs fall into the trap of creating separate centers for each skill or practice area. Perhaps one for testing, another for micro services, another for cloud native architecture. While this does seem to make sense - get the best people with the most knowledge around a practice area together - it neglects how the different practices work together cohesively and how you tie the practice areas together.

Dojos solve this problem by not focusing on skills or practices in isolation but rather in the context of the end-to-end product development lifecycle. Dojos take into account how the various skills and practices influence each other. Coaches work with full-stack teams to provide broader perspectives and deeper knowledge creation across different skill sets.

Creating Internal Best Practices

The core tenet behind CoEs is to find and promote best practices. This is problematic in and of itself since we know best practices work only for the simplest, most obvious problem domains. In addition, this is usually attempted through recruiting a small set of people that have been successful in their roles and bringing them all occasionally together to try and create patterns.  The onus is on the small group, a centralizing control. For those readers familiar with "The Starfish and the Spider", this is definitely a spider model.

The dojo, in contrast, is a starfish model. Instead of centralizing knowledge, we are trying to help teams grow their skills and then give back and share with others, removing the central ownership of ideas.

Dojos are the best way to achieve the intended outcomes of CoEs.  Want to learn more?  Reach out to us and let's chat - hello@dojoandco.com

Annealing and Tempering Product Teams

Annealing and tempering are two complementary heat treatment processes used to alter the physical characteristics of a material, most often metal. They’re frequently used to increase the strength of the metal while ensuring it does not become brittle. Like annealing and tempering – the learning processes that take place in the Dojo make product teams stronger while reducing their brittleness.

But first, some grounding…                                                

What is a “Product Team”?

 A product team is a group of people working together to deliver a product. Collectively, they have all the perspectives and skills necessary to develop the product.

The team has deep customer knowledge. They have a shared understanding of the customer’s desires and their underlying needs.

They understand the product opportunity as well as the development costs, allowing them to make informed design and delivery decisions about their product.

Their skills are not limited to development. They are also able to validate ideas in the early stages of product discovery, frame the product development effort in a way that supports fast feedback loops for learning and adjusting, deploy and run the product in production, and make adjustments based on analytics and feedback from real customers.

How does the Dojo help?

 First, the Dojo helps organizations understand how to form product teams. Resilient teams don’t spend weeks spinning around product feature decisions or struggle for long periods of time under the weight of not understanding their technology. It’s common to restructure teams during the intake process before they even enter the Dojo, ensuring all the skills necessary to complete product development are represented.

Product teams strengthen their skills by focusing on learning. All learning in the Dojo is done in the context of real product development, but learning is prioritized over delivery. And learning together – in pairs, small groups, and as a full-team – strengthens skills better than individual training.

A distinct advantage Dojos have over traditional courses is that teams improve all of the skills encompassing the full product development lifecycle. No more piecemeal training that doesn’t stick because teams don’t understand how it fits into the bigger picture. Or worse yet, training that doesn’t stick because it’s incompatible with the rest of the development cycle.

Product teams develop self-awareness by going through a Dojo experience together. They gain an understanding of each other’s strengths and skills and know how to best employ them collectively to optimize product development.

Would you like to have strong product development teams? If so, the Dojo will help you get there.