TV 2 DANMARK A/S

TV 2 DANMARK A/S is the company behind Denmark's most-watched channel, TV 2, and most-watched channel family. While viewers enjoy their favorite programs on a daily basis, there’s a dedicated team of more than 1,000 employees working behind the scenes to ensure the channel runs like clockwork. 

Located across different offices and fully remote due to COVID-19, the team at TV 2 relies on Lucid’s visual collaboration suite to work together seamlessly no matter where they are. Lucidchart’s intelligent diagramming capabilities and Lucidspark’s virtual whiteboard help employees communicate and plan across teams, facilitate effective meetings and workshops, and share ideas and knowledge. 

Conducting incremental planning

Every quarter, around 20 teams at TV 2 come together for increment planning. The focal point of this meeting is a dependency board that tracks tasks across teams and the dependencies between them. Initially, this meeting consisted of 100 people milling around giant white styrofoam boards, adding cards and connecting them with red string to indicate dependencies. However, the team encountered a range of problems with this physical board method. Project manager Kim Hoffman explains:

“The problem was that first of all, we had teams distributed across two physical locations, so that made it a bit hard to actually manage. And also with the ongoing changes, it became really difficult to staple these red pieces of yarn and make sure they were always pointing in the right directions.”

As a result, the team decided to start using Lucidchart for their dependency board each quarter. They created a custom template so that they have a consistent starting point every time. Product owners, product managers, team leads, and scrum masters all work together to add their items to the board and outline dependencies. By mapping everything out visually, they can better determine if their plans for the next quarter are achievable.

After the initial planning session, teams hold bi-weekly meetings, gathering virtually around the board to discuss progress and make updates. Lucidchart has made it far easier to adjust tasks on the fly, reflect changes instantaneously, and ensure everyone is kept up to date.

The switch to Lucidchart was a lifesaver when TV 2 was suddenly forced to go remote due to COVID-19. Product owner Morten Heide describes, “If we hadn't moved our dependency board to Lucidchart, I don't really know how we would have facilitated increment planning when we had to go remote. Because there are so many dependencies, it would have been impossible for us to administer that in a sensible way when we are distributed.”

Coordinating cross-functionally 

Architects at TV 2 also rely on Lucidchart to communicate and share knowledge between departments. By creating architecture flow diagrams and process maps, they can get everyone on the same page to collaborate and solve problems, while alleviating cognitive overload. Lucidchart visuals are often stored in Confluence alongside additional documentation to create shared views across teams. 

Kim describes the necessity of these living, centrally accessible documents for their teams: “The ability to have this living documentation and having building blocks that you can move back and forth is probably one of the main advantages of using a tool like Lucidchart for our architects because we try to have a collaborative approach to our process. And that means that the documentation needs to be alive and not just be set in stone. You need to have easy access to change and make new dependencies and map out where the things are and where they should be. So I think that's the main benefit of using a tool like Lucidchart.” 

Facilitating effective remote meetings 

Lucidspark was also key for helping the teams at TV 2 transition seamlessly to remote work. The virtual whiteboard allows them to still hold retrospective meetings, lean coffee sessions, brainstorming sessions, and workshops where everyone can contribute and stay engaged, even when they can’t be in the same room.

Lead scrum master Rune Vorret has found Lucidspark especially helpful for facilitating virtual events, both during the ideation phase and in the actual meeting execution. He explains, “Lucidspark is helpful when collaborating with colleagues about how to facilitate a particular workshop we are going to run. It’s how we share ideas and collect different materials and images so we can have a shared view of what we are discussing and how we are going to approach this workshop we are going to facilitate. Then we also prepare templates for the ease of executing the workshop.”

Once teams have their ideas on the board, they can quickly synthesize their thoughts and prioritize next steps. For example, the UX and design teams enjoy presenting different concepts within Lucidspark and then voting to decide which to move forward. Rather than becoming overwhelmed when the team ends up with sticky notes all over the board, lead scrum master Marie Orloff and her team use Lucidspark’s tagging and sorting features to easily organize board content and make sense of their ideas.  

The teams love that anyone can easily refer back to a Lucidspark board to see what has been done—they no longer have to worry about taking pictures and zooming in on a tiny sticky note. They’re also able to save time by turning to Lucidspark instead of physical post-its and whiteboards.

Kim describes, “I think some of our teams are saving time because previously when they were running retrospectives and we were using the physical post-its, there was a digitization process afterwards for documenting their findings. There are also benefits to having the digital format because you have more space to write on your post-it, and handwriting isn't an issue so it's easier to interpret the message sometimes—that's also a time saver.” 

Benefitting from the suite 

The fact that Lucidspark and Lucidchart are centrally managed under the Lucid visual collaboration suite has been key for the teams at TV 2. Employees are willing to try the products because of their familiarity with Lucid, and both products have been extremely simple for any employee to pick up and start using—this ease of use proved invaluable during the sudden shift to remote work. Since everything is done within the same ecosystem, distributing licenses and managing users and product adoption is much easier for admins. 

Visual collaboration within both Lucidspark and Lucidchart is helping teams across the company share knowledge and work together more efficiently to accomplish their goals. Rune describes it best: “I think a picture says a thousand words. It’s easier to come to a shared understanding when you can visualize it and say, ‘This is how I interpret what you just said.’ And so it helps us collaborate and get on the same page.”