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

Innovation has become a strategic imperative as technology and the new normal transform business operations.. CIOs can play a leading role in driving and industrializing technology-led innovation. Many CIOs face a significant gap between the current and desired state of their innovation capabilities. The new normal limits face-to-face interaction, which was supposed to be an integral part of innovation – co-creation workshops/design workshops. Can a virtual environment encourage employees to innovate? As a CIO, how do we provide the sandbox for experimentation?

Enters Virtual Dojo….

A Virtual Dojo is a critical piece of innovation in a digitally charged environment, where we are seeing record online transactions and a move to digital in every aspect of the business. At its core, “Virtual Dojo” is a space designed to host an immersive innovation platform and learning experience where full-stack teams come to innovate and learn modern engineering, product, and Agile, DevOps, and SRE practices. A virtual Dojo should be able to effectively coach hundreds of Engineers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Leaders on the new mindsets almost entirely with internal coaches. In terms of metrics, earlier when teams used a Virtual Dojo, it would take 3-6 months to provide hardware and software for development, integration, and testing. Using a Virtual Dojo, a team can spin up an environment in a matter of seconds.

Most CIOs built the Dojo initially focused on IT teams, but when they expanded its reach, it gradually served other areas of the company as well. We have seen instances where, teams from HR and Marketing have recently been among those trained. While it was originally seen as part of the support structure for the agile transformation, the Dojo has proved to be more of an engine powering change. We see that not only does the Dojo help teams build engineering acumen and deliver technology solutions, but it also has served to accelerate the organization’s cultural transformation.

We are seeing widespread adoption of Virtual Dojo. Members from Verizon, Target, Capital One, US Bank, Walmart, and 25 more companies (and growing) have established a burgeoning community around the “DOJO” transformation practice. Together, they are working to spread the immersive learning best practice to others to form a supportive community to grow the practice. The aim is to establish a shared knowledge pool, have learning events, and a cross-corporate community leveraged by all, to borrow what works and avoid what hasn’t, to accelerate the journey and success of all with this transformational model.

As we adapt to the new normal, only organizations that can innovate with certainty and on-schedule will leapfrog competitors. The CIO will be responsible for delivering the digital playground a home environment where all stakeholders can learn and grow- “Virtual DOJO.”