Open Christmas Letter for Demola Team Members

Morjens,

as Christmas is getting closer, I decided to write you all an open letter to share a little bit about the thoughts and as well advice with you.

At the moment all the 27 Demola Autumn 2015 projects with 161 team members are in the phase, where holidays and exams are here, Final Pitching event is is beyond only one month and more than half of the project term has already passed. This means that depending on the project, you might be facing very different situations! For some of you, the results to come might be chrystal clear, for some of you still vague – so that wrapping it all up seems like a frightening task.

Independently on where you are at the moment, the project is not at all over yet – might well be that the twist, step or idea that you need to make your project shine will be just around the corner and yet to come! At this point doing pivots with the implementation might be late (depending on your own vision of course), but when it comes to the approach and value your project brings, huge leap can still be done with moderate amount of work. Now when you are already deep in your project topic, you know your playground well. This is just the right moment to stop for a while with the essence of the project and answer the three questions:

• Why?
• What?
• To whom?

About your pitch, iteration is needed all the way to 14.1.2016 – no matter how good your pitch is at the moment, it can (and should) definitely be improved! Remember that it’s never enough to do the pitching to your co- team members – as you are all too deep in the project by now. The only way to do the real improvement is to pitch for different targets. Use your facilitator and end users but as well random people as the target! It’s even better if your audience doesn’t know that much about the topic – this makes you obliged to be clear and simplify.

The support, trainings and events from behalf of Demola are now done – so the rest is up to you to finish. As this has been the biggest Demola campaign so far, it has been interesting to follow you all and how results develop, sometimes bit by bit and sometimes via a sudden epiphany. With the last crunch before the Final Pitching Event, remember, that at this point it’s necessary to get the testable and triable demos out, as otherwise you might be raising your own bar of expectations higher and higher – to find out in the end of the project that it’s simply too high for the delivery. Small steps and continuous work are the key as well in innovation projects!

Everything before this have been just advise, but now follows two orders (concern your Demola projects but are to be applied more generally as well):

Order #1: Before the Christmas, empty your backlog.

Order #2: All the things in impossible-to-empty category, mark down in one calender entry set to the day you get back to business.

By following these two simple rules, you’ll have relaxing Christmas time with knowing that you don’t need to worry about pile of duties in your head and you’ll be fully able to focus to your friends and relatives, ham, chocolate or whatever your Christmas is made of.

Thanks for great job so far! Have a good Christmas time and Happy New Year!

On behalf of Demola Tampere Facilitators,
Ville