Internal Projects Day #2: It's All About Learning!

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This month most of our team met for another Internal Projects day, and we had some really great dynamics moments, with more focused projects and people trying different roles. This post includes some of the results, interesting numbers, and testimonials from the participants.

News In Kambu’s Internal Project Day

After the successful internal event two months ago, we decided to keep the momentum going while also narrowing down the focus.

So the format remained the same: one whole day. However, this time around, the Project Owners had to assign one of these focuses to their projects:

Testing new technologies or roles, so the team is pushed to try new thing
Internal tool, so we can build something that is useful immediately
Release, so the scope is small enough that we can release a MVP or proof of concept soon.

This raised the tension a bit, as now the groups felt they had to commit to a deliverable.

The Actual Day

The day had the same strict schedule as before, both for on-premise and remote people:

Early coffee
Morning call with everyone. POs present their project and state what they expected to achieve that day
Lunch break
Conclusion call with everyone. Teams share result.

The office was loud with chat the whole day, with around three times the number of people we see in a regular workday. It goes without saying that we follow all required safety protocols.

In the end, the attempt to enforce a focus didn’t work completely. The teams were aware of their commitment, however, so much time was spent on technical load! Configuring software, setting permissions, checking compatibility on every machine…

Essential Statistics

Two projects
24 people participated, 12 being at the office. Last time: 20 total, 12 at the office
Three pizzas and around 100 pieces of sushi swiftly dispatched

What The Team Says About It

I like the Internal Projects day because I can work with a different technology than usual, and often we make one feature as a group since we are using a language we don’t know that well.
Ewa, Project Manager and PHP programmer

About 1 month ago I had my first contact with JS and began to learn it, just to improve myself and to be more valuable for the company. I can say that the internal project showed me: “yes that’s the way!“

I feel a lot of satisfaction after our common work, because without our teammates (and not only :)), probably we would not be able to finish our tasks.
After all, I feel much more motivated to improve my skills.
Tomek, QA, worked in Frontend

[The Internal Projects day] is a great day to develop our creativity and learn about new technologies, thanks to which we gain new experiences. And of course, integration 🙂 in the office. It is happier right away 🙂
Ola, Design, also worked as Project Owner

[The Internal Projects day] is a more “free” experience. There is less pressure on time and efficiency, and more a sense of doing something for myself.
Joanna, Frontend Developer, also worked as Project Owner

Main Feedback and Findings

We asked for feedback from the participants and had great input from twelve of them.

1. On average people rated it 4.6/5

That’s even higher than last time’s 4.4/5!

The positive aspects reported by the team reveal a big satisfaction in seeing hard work coming to fruition. Some highlights:

“Being able to use different tools than usual and make them work, the most satisfying thing.”
“Showing the effects of our work”
“Pushing different features in just one day”
“Working with the team face to face and pizza&sushi, of course”

And the negative aspects show some frustration with setting up:

“Not everything works correctly on the released versions and additional work will be needed”
“I was a bit worried that we wouldn’t be able to finish before our last meeting”
“We’ve had some technical issues with running the application on the environment of few coworkers”