Accelerator workshops compress work that could take weeks or even months into a matter of days. Using rapid facilitation techniques, practitioners can tackle common problems that haunt projects that lack buy-in and vision.
Date: March 23rd, 2007
Location: Information Architecture Summit, Las Vegas, Nevada
Workshop Leaders: Jess McMullin and Yvonne Shek
Slides: Accelerator Workshops
Some of the tougher problems we face include aligning large teams, reaching consensus, being able to envision a solution, understanding business drivers, or simply agreeing on a set of features. Often, even after a solution has been reached and well documented, team members flip-flop or back track, fuelling uncertainty within the project and causing stress to the entire team. This frustrating cycle often iterates a number of times before agreement is reached – a process that often takes weeks and sometimes months.
In this full day session, we will introduce the idea of Accelerator Workshops, see why rapid facilitation works, and learn how to plan and conduct workshops that can condense months of work into a matter of days. We will also discuss, and work through the following topics:
- Increase intensity, productivity, and maximize team participation and buy-in
- Differentiating from project meetings (having the right people, right methods, and establishing a high level of commitment)
- Creative workshop activities, like design games, that build project touchstones
- Deep Listening, Live Captures, Predictive PowerPoint, and other rapid facilitation methods
- Importance of Feedback
- Post-Workshop Deliverables: be able to deliver on the day-after the Workshop! (without pulling an all-nighter)
To practice our workshop skills, we will focus on workshop activities such as:
- Breakouts and Merges
- Backcasting: Predict the project’s Press Release and other methods
- Role-play scenarios
- Draft scenario flows
- Examine secondary research to draft requirements
- Use empathy tools to write user requirements
After this session, practitioners will have the knowledge, tools, and practice to sell, plan, and run workshops that dazzle clients and teams. More importantly, this session will help practitioners at all levels be more effective at arriving at a shared vision, reaching solutions, and producing useful and usable team documents and artifacts.