Velocity – Its a metric, but not a metric to take serious.  This is my opinion!

• Is it beneficial to skip story points or think of each story as 1 point?
• Would it be okay to capture velocity, but tie zero goals or KPI’s to it?
• Do we need to hide velocity from managers and PM’s?
• Would it be okay to focus on building cool solutions and not worry about all these metrics?
• Do we do what works in regards to sprints and capacity for the team?
• How about we NOT measure team productivity by velocity, but rather deliverable’s!!

So what is Dojo Learning?  The concept originated at Target as an immersive learning approach to help drive agile adoption.

For a great explanation, please read “The Target Dojo“.

Below are some thoughts from my experience in a Dojo learning program.

• You are in the Dojo for 2 things.
  • Learn and develop Agile skills
  • Deliver on current work initiatives that add customer value
• You must enter the Dojo with an open mindset and be willing to break old habits and adapt new ones.
• The Dojo rooms themselves allow all team members to sit together in a collaborative environment.  Monitors can be setup to accommodate remote users as needed.
• The Dojo will usually have a dedicated coach\guide to help facilitate the Agile transformation journey.
• The team must be able to self-organize and adapt.  A key concept of Agile is the ability for a team to be agile itself.
• During the Dojo journey, the team will focus on learning Agile methods through shorter iterations, thus giving the team more repetitions.
• The Dojo journey is usually 1 – 2 months
• The initial iteration length is usually 2 – 3 days long, not 2 – 3 weeks.
• The shorter iterations allow for more experimentation and learning, thus allowing the teams to pivot more quickly.  (MVP)

This is a great way to facilitate learning and seems to really bring energy to the teams!