By: Amol Natu, Principal Director – Leader for Manufacturing, Digital Transformation Partner, LTIMindtree

Starting from where we left off…

Today, more than ever before businesses are making decisions based on data and not on “what we have done earlier”. Add to it the complexities of a virtual workplace and we truly understand the need for an environment, where companies and people can test ideas backed with data. This is the very genesis of a Virtual Dojo – enabling the virtual workforce to ideate based on data, in an environmentthat  reflects life. This begs the questione How can companies set up virtual Dojo’s to enable this? Where is a good place to start? What are the building blocks to get started?

Understanding the Dojo…

Before we answer the key steps, it is important to level up and understand what we can expect from a virtual Dojo. Based on the Japanese places of learning, the Dojo is built as an environment where teams can enter to get an immersive learning experience focusing on Project, Product, Lean, Agile, and DevOps mindset. A virtual Dojo is very similar  as it provides a safe space and an immersive learning experience with a full stack IT application dynamic environment to apply new ways of working in their real-world services and pods. In a virtual Dojo environment, teams shall learn new skills and technologies, be it – project definition, project discovery, story writing, value stream mapping, continuous integration, continuous delivery, automated testing, cloud, etc, to enable them to pivot and enable innovation many times faster than they could on their own.

What does setting up a virtual Dojo entail for a CIO …

As the CIO, where do we start on the virtual Dojo journey? One of the first steps would be to set up the environment – Identify and build the first and most common delivery pipeline (read environment) and create a plan for the remaining pipelines – the 80/20 Pareto rule would apply here. Let’s see a use case fit for this purpose.

A global manufacturer that supports a critical business application deployed across the globe in multiple regions would like to engage in an enterprise integration project and integrate their 17 separate ERPs implementations -Workday, Salesforce, SAP, QAD, GL systems, third-party applications et all. Each deployment in the manufacturing enterprise integration project , say using an integration platform like Mulesoft, would take about eight weeks on average to design, build, test and deploy. The most senior technical elements should  be on-site with the deployment team to identify fault tolerance. With functionalities that need to be accommodated daily and changes on an urgent basis, the need for an experimentation environment is more than ever before.

The Dojo, in this case, would be representative environments from the ERPs built within each regional setup. While SAP EMEA, SAP NA, SAP, and APAC could potentially have an independent environment, QAD environments may opt for a single instance instead of a region-wise representation in the Dojo world. Pilots, Point of views, and security breach tests are to be done in these virtual Dojo setups. Since this is built on the same network, the challenges during implementation would reflect during the use of the virtual Dojo.

A run in the virtual Dojo is needed to identify the pain points and  activities that don’t add value. These activities need to be optimized or eliminated. A virtual Dojo setup can identify (even pre-empt) any such challenges , and kinks in the armor – be it in  terms of network issues, security approvals, bulk transfer issues, HTTPS  configuration changes etc.- issues that  holdup projects and miss deadlines.

Let’s not skip security…

As we enable business by installing applications everywhere, we rely on web and mobile applications to engage customers and software to run a massive new wave of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. But these apps  expose us to increase risk. Security  ensures it is an integral part of the software delivery life-cycle. Security in DevOps should cover a holistic view of security including security culture, secure software delivery, and secure infrastructure. A virtual Dojo, in this case, would be a platform where threats can not only be simulated but also tailored to each company’s network.

The most important link – People and  Process…

As is true for any change, infrastructure is only one part of the puzzle, enabling people and processes is key. When it comes to people and process, a successful virtual Dojo is about providing access to people with a variety of skills. An organization-wide virtual Dojo is to be staffed with a team of Agile/Product and Technical coaches to help teams truly learn and use the skills and values they need to succeed. When each team enters the Dojo, they are to be assigned coaches to help them learn Product, Lean, Agile, and DevOps mindsets and practices, including self-organization, prioritization, outcomes based goals and more.

Where to now?

Check the next article where we talk about how Virtual Dojo’s  will redefine RFPs and the future of big deals. Can you think of any other use cases for a virtual Dojo?