How do you ensure structured and meaningful meetings with high participants involvement without requiring extensive preparations? At Engage Group we have adopted a “Lean Coffee”- approach for our reoccurring Architecture Board meetings.

Lean Coffee

The idea of “Lean Coffee” as a meeting concept was born in Seattle in 2009. Founders Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith wanted to create a simple, yet efficient meeting format. The emphasize should be on providing “the least structure necessary for a coherent and productive meeting. No more, no less”. – Leancoffee.org

How does Lean Coffee work?

1. Set up a Kanban Board – Create a Kanban board to provide a structure for the conversation
2. Decide what to discuss – Add topics for conversation into the Kanban board
3. Vote and Talk – Vote for topics to discuss

Architecture Board at Engage

At Engage Group we have adopted the “Lean Coffee” concept to facilitate our recurring Architecture Board meetings. Considering the key concept of providing a structured approach, yet with minimal preparation, it allows us to have meaningful discussions with our team of highly experienced Dynamics 365 Solution- & Technical architects that is typically very busy in various customer engagements.

Due to the pandemic and geographical challenges of being located at different physical locations, we run these gatherings as virtual meetings where we take advantage of virtual collaboration tools such as Miro.

We start by spending a few minutes on brainstorming and adding topics to discuss using a virtual Kanban bord and sticky notes.

When the number of topics start reaching a certain point, we start voting on topics to discuss (each participant gets two votes).

Finally, we start discussing the highest voted topic. The sticky note is then moved to the “Discussion” column. Typically, we spend 10 minutes per topic with the possibility to extend by 5 minutes depending on need. When completed, we move the sticky note to “Discusses” and then continue with the next topic.

Actions derived from the various discussions are added into a separate “Actions”- column for follow-up purposes. See example below:

Conclusion

The Architecture Board is a vital part of Engage Group’s philosophy of creating a “learning first culture” where we continuously share our experiences and challenge way of working. We believe this creates an inspiring work environment which ultimately is beneficial to our clients.

What is you experience of using an Architecture Board in a Dynamics 365 context? If you are interested to learn mot about the Architecture Board at Engage, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Regardless of company or industry, there is a continuous need for innovation and the use of different types of software. Thus, there is also the requirement for efficient and well-functioning application testing.

This has been seen as a given in large parts general software development and new innovations have long been built with the help of automated tests and continuous deployments. Why has automation not come further for critical ERP systems?

One reason is that ERP projects have used and are still using classic waterfall projects where speed has not been prioritized. A false (to some extent) security has been built up with few major releases instead of a more agile way of working, that put higher demands on automated program testing and a faster deployment rate. Another historical factor is that the hurdle to get started has been too high and the projects have built a technical debt that feels too heavy and costly to overcome. The suppliers’ strategies in the area have simply also been too weak. Thankfully, large steps have been taken in the right direction in recent years.

Take these steps to get started:

1. Secure support: Make sure the management thinks this is a brilliant idea and long-term necessity.
2. Get help: Get help from an expert and make sure you get started! Start by setting a reasonable initial scope, define a clear set of rules, appoint and educate those responsible, and choose the right testing tool.
3. Get started: Start with simple processes and build from there. Be sure to inspire and educate along the way so more key people realize the importance and benefits of automating.
4. Improve continuously: Everything should not be automated – you will continue to have prototype-, user- and certain function-testing that there is no point in automating. Get started first and improve gradually. Learning by doing.

Feel free to contact us if you want to talk about automated testing in general or Microsoft Dynamics 365 testing specifically. At Engage, we have a methodology that we have used to help several customers get started, carefully selected tools, and set the scope for automated testing of Microsoft’s monthly updates or our own functional releases. The whole idea is based on getting started quickly with implementation in order to gradually build the customer’s own ability to drive testing.