Another monthly Tech Day with Atlassian, where we came together in the office of The Hague. In the June edition of this, we discussed a lot of things, such as the trends and developments, marketing and sales.
What is that? One might wonder!
A Tech Day is an internal event where like-minded individuals in the underlying technology stack come together to discuss the most important and pressing things. On the contrary to a dull movie that you have to sit through just because you paid for the tickets, this is a 3-hour-long event that is fun, interactive, and organized to keep your ideas flowing.
How it all began.
We started with a look back on what we discussed during our Last Tech Day, the actions we took and tracked the progress on the goals we have set for ourselves.
To kick off this Tech Day we asked everyone how they have been doing since the last session and if there is something they would like to get off their sleeves. Finally, a simple question had to be answered – “What is the nicest place you have been to, between the last and this Tech day? ”
The answers ranged from :
- Driving the fast cars in Germany
- Having a fun outing at a Theme Park
- Enjoying the evenings at a Nice Beach
- Last-minute arrival for a flight to Italy
- Visiting Luxembourg
- Attending a wedding in France
- Spontaneously joining other Devoteamers for sailing
We continued to follow the template which we created in Confluence to go through the topics one by one. As we are a fast-growing team, defining our roles and responsibilities was the first topic to discuss. In our team, consultants wear multiple hats, which we highly value.
After this enlightening round of discussion, we followed up by drawing out the complete life cycle of a project by creating a timeline which we drew on the whiteboard with markers. This part aimed to address team involvement in projects from A to Z. Who is doing what and how can we best support each other in every project phase, from pre-sales to delivery and support?
It is very important to acknowledge these contributions, which usually go unnoticed when a project is delivered successfully.
Collaboration is the key
The sales and the marketing team joined us to give us updates of their respective fields. We celebrated the certifications some of us achieved during the last month and also shared how to approach them with key focus areas. We also addressed the Best-practices we follow at our clients and have them documented in our Confluence to keep us all up to date. You can say that we practice what we preach.
After this discussion, we decided to take a short break to stretch our legs and brew coffee to get our creative juices flowing, which we needed for our next activity.
How does the Atlassian team want to deliver support?
The kindergarten approach
For the final topic Support contracts, we divided ourselves into 3 groups consisting of 3 members. Each group was given a pen and a piece of paper and went out brainstorming. To properly address the topic, we developed three main questions;
- Why is support important?
- How can we best provide support?
- How do we tailor support to the needs of the client?
Everyone was given 20 minutes to identify bottlenecks and possible solutions. Things quickly got interesting, and each group member was encouraged to share their ideas and insights. When the clock ticked, we then asked every group to share their take on the topic and solutions.
Democratically, we then voted on the solutions, and to nobody’s surprise, the brilliant minds solved it. Simple yet efficient.
To conclude our Tech Day we agreed on the decisions taken, which was followed by a short informal round of feedback. Great participation and great success. We highly recommend other teams to have Tech Days like these! It allows the team to discuss practical things, as we did during this session, but also to explore your tech domain and share knowledge.
The dinner
Oh, not to forget! To conclude this day, we had a great team dinner in the city center of The Hague. Usually, we go out for drinks after a creative afternoon, but this was a special occasion
Do you like these kinds of events? Check out our I-Tech career page, and perhaps you would be able to join this community’s next event!