Capgemini Dynamics team kick off 2018

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” — Henry Ford

Kick off

Each year the Capgemini Dynamics team has a kick-off meeting that gives the opportunity for the team to meet in person, set the goals for the year and make sure we’re all aligned.

Microsoft Dynamics projects are often delivered on site and the team can be split over separate clients. It’s important for everyone not to be isolated and feel connected with the wider team, not just the people on their project.

It’s an investment to bring the team together for an entire day but invaluable to ensure a shared vision of the goals, strategy and to celebrate successes. We deliver enterprise projects and these projects are delivered by a team of Dynamics professions rather than one professional; and with the increase in demand, we need all the team to help each other.

The Capgemini Dynamics team works hard to make sure we connect as a team and work together as a team. To feel part of a team, you need to have a relationship with the people on the team. We do this by having regular calls where individuals share knowledge with everyone and we collaborate on internal projects. /tools which are used on all projects.

The goals of the kick off were:

• Outline the strategy and goals of the team
• To enable everyone on the team to know each other as a person
• Team values
• Discuss the technical solutions we created to help all projects
• Update reviewer tree and set expectations of reviewers
• Understanding the bid process and how to support it
• Discussions on Microsoft Dynamics industry and trends

Improving

The kick off is a great time to reflect the progress of the team and the during the last year we have grown, won more projects and improved our DevOps and tools:

• The growth of the team is excellent
• We improved our DevOps infrastructure to work with Microsoft Dynamics online
• Created a data mover tool to enable the movement of data with DevOps process
• Created Code Analyser to warn about Microsoft Dynamics code (which we hope to make public soon — watch this space)
• Hired more apprentices for the team (read about the apprentices here and why we like to hire apprentices here), if you want to apply click here
• 26 certifications in 2017

Goals

The goals for the team in 2018:

• Raise the profile of the team (blog posts, social media, attend events)
• Recruitment — continue to hire the best talent (Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and Unified Operations), click the links for more details — Microsoft Dynamics 365 Developer, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Architect, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Operations Developer, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Operation Tech Lead
• 2 certifications per person (not just Dynamics but also Azure, Office 365
• Share knowledge between team through meetings
• Improve team tools and shared code
• Continue to grow the Dynamics 365 for Unified Operations (AX) team
• Work more efficiently as a global Dynamics team

People help people

If you get an email or call from someone you haven’t met, you are less likely to help them because they are not a real person, they are a virtual person. The bond that ties the workforce together is relationships because people help people.

It’s important to get know your work colleagues, particularly when you are part of a team because one of the people on the team might be the person who is helping you resolve a production issue next week.

The better you know people, the more fun and interesting conversations you can have at work. If you know someone’s hobbies, interests, sports team or family when you can ask them questions and get back interesting answers. A break between work helps you focus on work because it’s not possible to stay focused on work all day.

Fun facts

To find a bit more about each other, each person had to create 2 true facts and 1 fake fact — the team had to guess the fake. This brought up some interesting facts about the team.

• Hosk looks like he would name his cat Fluffy
• Zoe has been in the classical music charts
• Luke is a Hungarian pinball champion
• Mark fell off a ferry whilst it was sailing
• Andras got lost in a desert for 3 days
• Tom can do a Rubik’s cube in under 2 minutes
• Lewis did a DJ set before Liberty X (give me just a little bit more)
• Kriss tried to trick us into thinking he was tempted to join the church!
• Max is a big fan of playing dodge ball
• Matt has a detailed knowledge of all the Karaoke places in Birmingham
• One of the team is obsessed by Nicolas Cage!

The meal

A few pictures from the meal