2 day knowledge dojo
2-Day Knowledge Dojo
Bringing diverse teams together to address user needs
Bruce Lee once said: "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do". With this inspirational quote in mind, I kicked-off a unique knowledge-sharing workshop this week at Siemens Healthineers, together with my fellow Scrum Masters/ agile coaches. Developers, product owners, as well as product managers and architects from several teams in our department, participated in our first "Knowledge Dojo". The term "dojo" comes from martial arts - it means "place of the Way" in Japanese. A dojo is a training center to practice skills in order to learn how to apply these in real life. In our "Knowledge Dojo", similar to a traditional dojo, it was a place for sharing knowledge but also actively applying this knowledge to address real user needs. Here's a breakdown of how we structured the Knowledge Dojo:
Day 1
We started with a short reflection on where we were coming from. The product owners (or in Dojo language, so-called "senseis") presented feedback from past cross-team feature sharing - what worked and what didn't work. In addition, the developers (otherwise known as "ninjas") were taken through a "deep dive" into the current & future end-to-end value stream - how users define, design and realize a new product. The teams were able to ask questions for clarifying important user steps and milestones. In the afternoon, we worked in cross-team breakout sessions. The teams were assigned to smaller Teams rooms named after famous real-life Dojo locations: Osaka, Tokyo and Okinawa. Each team had a moderator/ Scrum Master (or "sempai") assigned to keep groups on track with the assignment and also to bring in experts, as needed. Afterwards, the teams got to work identifying gaps and potential solutions in the value stream.
Day 2
We went directly into Team Breakouts to collect even more insights on the proposals from Day 1. The team discussions and feedback were focused on how to enrich requirements and write better use cases for better requirements implementation. At the end of day, we participated in an interactive retrospective session on how to improve in the Dojo in the future. Team members commented that attending the Knowledge Dojo was helpful for getting a "bird's eye view of the end-to-end process", especially relating to the value stream and also broadening their knowledge about the business and user journey.
The Knowledge Dojo encouraged true cross-team collaboration. It was also a fun way to learn - the Dojo setting provided a separate (virtual) learning space apart from our normal work. We took dedicated time to work together on common problems and strive for continuous improvement.
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