Remote Work

Digital Workplace Summit 2021 - Distributed teams can be aligned

Luis Ortiz

— 4 min read
Digital Workplace Summit 2021 - Distributed teams can be aligned

The mainstream adoption of hybrid work models has transformed the workplace in such a radical fashion that we are still getting used to it. Many organizations have replaced in-place meetings and working arm to arm with fellow colleagues with video conferences and asynchronous communications. It has not been easy, but boy has it been interesting.

While the trend keeps expanding, many pros want to help organizations continue in this brand new world. One example is the people at Communardo, experts in app development and consultancy services for collaboration. They hosted the Digital Workplace Summit 2021 (#DWSC21), where industry experts shared their insights in four main categories: Digital Mind, Digital Work, Digital Agile, and Digital Business.

With over 250 participants and more than 40 speakers, this event has positioned itself as one of the most relevant in the Atlassian community. Due to that reason, the team at SoftwareDevTools could not miss the opportunity to participate as a sponsor, represented by Encora Inc. We also had the chance to attend some conferences, chat with some attendees and learn exciting takeaways.

Check the video we shared in our booth during the event:

Align for an Agile transformation

Our top pick was the Enterprise Agility with Jira Align - If the journey to Mars is too simple keynote, by the solutions architect Philipp Staat and the technical account manager Björn Wiehe. Their conversation was focused on how to effectively perform an agile transformation inside an organization structured in several, interdependent teams; based on three main elements that are leveraged by the Jira Align Scaled Management Platform:

People - It is vital to empower people so they become accountable for their projects and feel confident enough to bring their best.

Process - A clear definition of how the practices should be adopted and the expected outcomes will help people become oriented and mindful of the transformation.

Products - The tools are a crucial part of the means to your ends. Remember that the tools must be used to fit your vision and objectives and not the other way around.

As you can see, the elements are listed in order of relevance: First, people, then processes and tools, as the Agile Manifesto states, and it is a structure that heavily resonates with our internal team value at SoftwareDevTools. We even published a blog post with some interesting data and tips to help your team adopt new tools, as they "represent a great way to solve issues, achieve better results and be more productive, but they are only as good as the people using them." Check the article here.

Aligning all the teams

Jira Align is basically Jira for scaling teams. It enables different business units to work towards one source of truth, which may be a dream come true for many managers, PMs, and the like. Cross-team collaboration and keeping track of it is a critical feature of this solution, which offers the following framework structure:

The image depicts the general structure that the platform is designed to follow, with the primary goal to help you keep the business flow and effectively track it. That will let you improve predictability over complex pipelines, starting at the ideation phases and going all the way to product shipping without slowing down any of your teams' performance.

Both Phillip and Björn are enthusiastic about how a shared context can do wonders for organizations, tightening bonds across teams. Especially today, with the hybrid work models fever going on, transparency about the state of tasks, clarity of processes, and an effective permeation of the organization's culture guarantee productivity and performance.

If you need any help with its deployment, be sure their specialists will be glad to help your company technically and culturally adopt it. The following snapshot can give you a general idea of how your organization should be structured to support a scaled Agile framework compatible with Jira Align.

Until next year

It was great to be part of this experience and connecting with folks from Germany and its surroundings. We hope the information we put together is as helpful to you as it was to us. We will keep you posted about Communardo’s events and will try to attend the following year’s Digital Workplace Summit. It will be great to see how trends might have evolved in one year. Maybe we will all be able to meet our avatars in an entire virtual reality environment. You never can tell.

Are you adopting or looking to improve your Agile practices? Is your team remote? If your answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, you should check out our products for distributed teams. We focus on making communication more effective and easier for remote teams.

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