by Facilitation Expert | Nov 10, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Tools
Force Field analysis modifies and improves upon a similar approach called “pros & cons.” Force Field analysis helps groups identify and prioritize actions and opportunities for improvement, especially among product and project teams.
This approach to Force Field analysis makes it easier for groups to organize their thinking while encouraging thoughtful exploration. Once supportive and hindering forces are identified, the group analyzes the impact, leading to actions that reinforce the positive and mitigate the negative forces.
Procedure to Facilitate Force Field Analysis
Force field analysis begins by identifying the objectives, or CTQs (Critical to Quality), or targets. First, facilitate clear understanding of WHAT needs to change. Next, for each discrete objective (typically built in advance of a meeting or workshop and provided in a pre-read as a slide or handout), ask the following questions, ONE AT A TIME:
- What is hindering us from reaching this target (negative, or forces hindering change)?
- Environmental Forces
- Structural/ Organizational Forces
- Technological Forces
- Individual Forces
- What is helping us move toward this target (positive, or forces supporting change)?
- Environmental Forces
- Structural/ Organizational Forces
- Technological Forces
- Individual Forces
The responses will generate two new lists (ie, positive/ supporting and negative/ hindering forces). Adapt the Peter Senge philosophy that it is easier to remove obstacles (the hindrances) than to push harder (supportive forces). Focus discussion on what we can do differently to overcome the hindrances or obstacles. Facilitate the discussion on one obstacle at a time. For each obstacle, consider at least one action and perhaps more.
Once all actions have been clarified and understood, it may be necessary to prioritize them. When you have more than a one dozen actions, consider the Pareto Principle (ie, 80-20 Rule). If so, use MG RUSH’s PowerBall, Perceptual Mapping, or Decision-Matrix tools to facilitate consensual prioritization.
Notes about Force Field Analysis
See how the first list of objectives generates two lists (i.e., supports and hindrances) that lead to one consolidated action list, as shown in the diagram:
Transform Force Field Analysis into Actions
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Nov 3, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making, Meeting Structure, Prioritizing
Quantitative SWOT analysis contrasts the internal, controllable aspects of the organization (i.e., Strengths and Weaknesses) with external, uncontrollable situational factors (i.e., Opportunities and Threats) to create consensus around potential actions an organization might take to reach its goals and objectives.
Qualitative situational analysis[1] provides a poor method for building consensus. In what Dr. Tufte refers to as ‘flatland’, answers pop out at people, but not consensual answers. Therefore, consider using quantitative SWOT analysis, developed by Terrence Metz while attending the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Traditionally, SWOT provides a narrative description of the current situation. We encourage a quantitative approach whenever you are faced with prioritizing a complex situation involving dozens, or even hundreds of options.
TO-WS (SWOT) QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS (Current Situation or Situation Analysis)
This activity describes the current Situation by developing a shared understanding to support WHAT Actions a group should embrace so that they reach their Key Measures such as objectives (SMART), goals (fuzzy), and considerations (binary).
A quantitative view of the Current Situation displays the foundation for justifying Actions. Consequently, Actions that currently work well are potentially reinforced and renewed alongside new Actions that get approved and developed.
The term used to describe Actions will change depending on your level in the holarchy. For example, an organization will refer to Actions as strategies, a business unit may use the term initiatives, a department or program office may call their Actions new products or new projects, and a product or project team may call their Actions, activities, or tasks. For each group, the term used represents WHAT the group is going to do to reach its Key Measures that were established to ensure that the group achieves its Vision.
The Current Situation provides consensual descriptions of:
- Current environment (TO-WS)
- Threats (externally uncontrollable, frequent trends)
- Opportunities (externally uncontrollable, frequent trends)
- Weaknesses (internally controlled, as viewed by competitors or competitive forces)
- Strengths (internally controlled, as viewed by competitors or competitive forces)
- Assumptions made in developing analysis
- Model representing how stakeholders view the business or organization
WHAT Actions the group foresees, given their Current Situation, to help reach or exceed their Measures in support of achieving their Vision
General Questions, Which . . .
- threats are most worrisome and justify defense?
- opportunities provide a real chance of success?
- weaknesses need the most correction?
- core competencies or strengths should be leveraged?
Blank TO-WS Scoring Sheet
Procedure
- Have people prepared to share their TO-WS factors in advance but keep them private. Let them reference their notes as we proceed.
- Develop consensual lists and complete definitions (use Definition Tool) for each Threat, Opportunity, Weakness, and Strength. If necessary, reduce each list to the top four to six factors (see Categorizing logic and then use PowerBalls for prioritizing, along with Bookends to prevent wasting time).
- As you build four different lists, describe each entry clearly and carefully. Threats and Opportunities are externally uncontrolled and frequently represent trends. Weaknesses and Strengths are internally controlled as viewed by competitors and outsiders.
- Build and enforce strong definitions and potential measurements behind each TO-WS. For example, the strength of ‘Brand’ could be measured as market share among target customers or the threat of ‘Transportation Costs’ could be indexed to the cost of a barrel of oil or the price for a liter of diesel.
NOTE: Reverse the common SWOT sequence to TO-WS because it’s easier and more effective to deal initially with external factors, especially Threats. Technically, there are only two lists, both with a plus and minus end of their continuum. If the factor is external and you do not control it, by definition it must be a Threat or an Opportunity (TO). Therefore, if the factor is internal and you control it, by definition it must be a Weakness or a Strength (WS).
REMEMBER: NEVER allow a group to define an internally controllable Weakness as an Opportunity for improvement. If it is controllable, by definition it is a Weaknesses and NOT an Opportunity.
We call it TO-WS because most experts agree this is the best sequence to consider:
-
- External Threats: It’s easy to imagine what could go wrong.
- External Opportunities: Since Threats come more easily, remind participants to refer to their list of prepared factors.
- Internal Weaknesses: Participants are usually more sensitive about things going wrong than to what is positive.
- Internal Strengths: Begin by referring to their notes.
NEXT
- Create a definition package so that each of the characteristics scored is based upon an agreed ‘operational definition.’
- Convert your four lists into a matrix (usually a spreadsheet) with Threats (-) and Opportunities (+) on the horizontal axis and Strengths (+) and Weaknesses (-) on the vertical axis (because it is easier to visually focus on columns rather than rows).
- Remind participants that they are on the inside looking out and have them score, using instructions that follow later.
- Aggregate the individual scores into a collective score. If you are using the spreadsheet, it will automatically calculate a group total.
- Review with the group to identify the most impactful Actions—strategies, initiatives, products, projects, or activities.
CRITICAL NOTE:
Carefully enforce the operational level in your holarchy and meeting scope because the Strengths and Weaknesses MUST BE within the control of THIS group, NOT simply the company or organization. For example, a department may not control its budget so financial resources may be viewed as a Threat to the group because they do not control the budget or financial assets.
Sample Questions to Generate Threats:
- What is your competition doing much better than you?
- What regulatory issues could stop or hinder progress?
- Which trends are a real threat to your organization/ project?
Some Questions to Generate Opportunities:
- What are you not doing yet but could easily see yourself doing with the right momentum?
- Name a political policy that might help.
- Which trends provide a new opportunity for you?
Sample Questions to Generate Weaknesses:
- What could you improve?
- Detail something not working so well.
- What do others outside do poorly and so do you?
- What should you stop doing?
Some Questions to Generate Strengths:
- How do you currently achieve success?
- What do you do better than others?
- What do others outside view as your strengths?
PARTICIPANT SCORING INSTRUCTIONS
- Working within each column (i.e., external factor), one at a time ask: “What am I suggesting we do (to take advantage of this specific opportunity) or (to defend us against this specific threat)?”
- As you decide on WHAT to do, write down your most important ideas on a separate piece of paper to bring with you to the next meeting.
- You have nine points to be used in each column. Within each column, distribute the nine (9) points according to the impact or perceived value of each proposed Action (i.e., WHAT we should do to seize an opportunity or defend ourselves against a threat).
The total for each column should equal nine (9).
- Avoid assigning one point to multiple items by awarding the most significant items three, four, or more points.
- Strive to assign points to three cells at most in each column. Assigning nine points to only one cell is okay. Another tactic might be to assign five (5) points to the most important, three (3) points to the next important, and one (1) point to the third most important cell, with the balance of the cells kept blank.
- Use your business understanding—a blank cell does not mean it is unimportant. Rather, it means it is less important than others that offer more impact or leverage. If you are compelled to assign similar values to everything, the results will be watered down and provide less value for developing Actions than if you focus on the most compelling Actions.
One Person Scoring Sheet
NOTE: Participants should think about each cell in a column carefully when asking “WHAT can we do to seize this opportunity?” or “WHAT do we need to do to defend against this threat?” They might write their thoughts on a separate sheet of paper and when they have completely analyzed a column, go to the cells that represent the most important ideas and put the most points in those cells.
Scoring Tabulation
- Collect the scoring. Using a spreadsheet, compute the final scores for each cell intersection, each column, each row, and each quadrant.
- Review the scores with the group and highlight the rows and quadrants with the most significant (i.e., highest) scores.
- Immediately move to the next step in the agenda to convert the results into narrative Actions. Anticipate the ‘law of large numbers’ as people speaking early will defend themselves with the ‘large numbers’ from the spreadsheet.
Scoring Aggregated for Eleven Participants
Riffs and Variations
Using Bookend rhetoric, force rank each Strength or Weakness specific to each external factor. For example, if there are twelve combined Strengths and Weaknesses, we would support the following analysis for each column:
-
- Instruct each participant to ask: “Of these twelve controllable factors, which has the greatest impact on (taking advantage of this opportunity) or (defending us against this threat)?” More is better so assign the answer a twelve (12).
- Now instruct each participant to ask: “Of the remaining eleven factors, which has the least impact on . . . ?” Assign a one (1).
- Continue using Bookends, which is next most, next least, etc., until all have been assigned a rank.
- Aggregate scores and continue to convert them into Actions described in the next Agenda Step.
You might conduct a Quantitative TO-WS for the current date and situation, and then conduct another Quantitative TO-WS for some agreed-upon date in the future. Encourage participants to unveil the strategy by determining what Actions will get us from the current date to the future date.
To support change management, you could also conduct Quantitative TO-WS at varying levels within the organization. Contrasting the Current Situation at the C-Suite, Director, and supervisory levels provides interesting and compelling evidence as to WHAT “Actions” need to occur that will get us from where we are to where we would like to be in the future.
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 20, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Structure
When making decisions, consider testing for decision quality (DQ)[1] so that you can avoid having another meeting. A quick method involves testing your options against your purpose to gauge alignment and support. However, this DQ Spider offers a more robust method.
First, remember that the MGRUSH technique defines consensus as a decision good enough that it ‘will be supported’ (not thwarted in the hallway or uprooted in the board room) and not cause anyone to ‘lose any sleep’ rather than being anyone’s ‘favorite’ or making them ‘happy.’ Hence, this is NOT Kum-Bah-Yah, rather we are relying on the prowess of structured facilitation.
Decision Quality Spider Chart
How to Begin Using the DQ Spider
When either comparing decisions or testing for the quality of a single decision, the method remains the same. Therefore, plan on scoring and discussing six vectors that impact decision quality:
The Six Vectors[2] and Some Supporting Questions of a DQ Spider
-
Appropriate Context (Frame)
- Do you have an articulate problem to address?
- How clear is the background, context, and impact of the decision?
- How well do stakeholders commonly understand the problem?
- To what extent do stakeholders commonly prioritize the problem?
- To what extent has the decision been quantified for its impact, typically in dollars or FTP (full-time person)?
-
Options Development (NOTE: some call these ‘alternatives.’ but strictly speaking, in the English language, an alternative is one of two there are more than two, and they are called options)
- What are the possible solutions (decisions)?
- What potentially critical options are missing?
- Which inconsequential options be eliminated?
- With remaining options:
- To what extent are they realistic (doable)?
- If the option is selected, to what extent will we win?
-
Meaningful & Reliable Information
- To what extent do we know what we need to know?
- To what extent do we NOT know what we need to know?
- How trustworthy are the sources of our information?
- To what extent will this be a fact- or evidence-based decision?
-
Clear Decision Criteria (aka Values, Trade-offs, etc.)
- To what extent have we identified and clarified the most important criteria?
- How well have the criteria been prioritized to reflect our internal value drivers?
- How comprehensive are the criteria to help measure success against the project or organizational goals and objectives?
-
Logic and Reasoning
- How solid are our research, logic, and findings?
- How well can we explain our choice for and choices against our options?
- To what extent have we applied appropriate tools and rigors to evaluate this option?
-
Action and Commitment
- How confident are we projecting the outputs or outcome of this option?
- How ready are we to commit ownership and resources to this option?
- To what extent have we missed anything substantive that could impact the quality of this decision?
How to Complete the DQ Spider?
Consider this quick and simple method to capture scoring, using a low of one (1) and a high of five (5).
- Instruct each team member or stakeholder to generate their scores for the six vectors above. Thus they attribute an individual score against all remaining options.
- Using a spreadsheet or simply drawing it on a large format Post-It® paper or whiteboard, put a dot on the average value. Also place a dot for each outlier, the lowest and highest score, along each of the six vectors.
- Discuss the outliers so that everyone can support the original average, or move the average value either lower or higher based on the discussion and consensual understanding.
- Facilitate discussion around comparing the results and consider the following questions:
- To what extent are the values defensible?
- Which scores appear too high or low relative to the project or initiative they are supporting? (adjust the score if necessitated)
- To what extent do the differences represent real risk or simply differences of opinion?
- You may want to force rank the six vectors if some are more important than others. Consequently, tell the group to consider the ranking during its assessment, and if necessary, change the values based on a permutation of the reduced or increased weight of each vector.
- Therefore, in our illustration above, stakeholders would favor Option 3 if Ownership and Commitment are substantially more important than logic or reliable information.
- Likewise, stakeholders would favor Option 1 if Context and Logic become more important than Criteria and Information.
NOTES:
[1] NOTE: Microsoft Excel refers to this chart as a “Radar” Chart. However, various terms are used by other consulting firms as well.
[2] A ‘dimension’ or ‘factor’ captures a single measurement while a ‘vector’ captures multiple dimensions or factors. Additionally, vectors normally capture many more than two measurements.
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 13, 2016 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support
Accurate estimating for meeting duration helps optimize the schedules and expectations of your participants. Therefore, stay vigilant. When estimated incorrectly, your sessions risk the worst deliverable from any meeting — another meeting.
Poor estimating also leads to poor-quality deliverables. Additionally, if your meeting duration expands, expect scheduling challenges from people and facilities (room availability) and critically — erosion of your facilitator’s credibility.
General Guidelines for Estimating Meeting Duration
Complete meetings within fifty minutes unless your meeting focuses on information updates, such as a staff meeting or daily scrum — then limit the meeting to fifteen minutes, standing up. Time limits ensure that participants do not become frustrated or exhausted. Likewise, consistency encourages more reliable and prompt attendance for the meetings you facilitate.
Estimating Meeting Duration Schedule your meetings to begin at five past the hour or half hour. Conclude within fifty minutes, typically five minutes before the hour or half-hour. In other words, be the one session leader courteous enough to allow your participants time between meetings (i.e., back-to-backs) to check their email, grab some coffee, etc.
Estimating Workshop Duration
As a general rule, schedule workshops for no more than two (or three) days in length, although Design Sprints and Hot Washes (aka Lookbacks or Post Mortems) will run up to five days.
The workshop is the ultimate time-box—that is, work expands or contracts to fill the time allotted. Therefore, Guesstimate how long each agenda step takes. After that, add up your times. When they total between sixteen and twenty-five hours, make it a three-day workshop. If less, make it a two-day (or partial) session. If more than thirty hours, you are better off scheduling two sessions (unless participants are subject to substantial travel time and costs).
Office politics, poor workshop environment (physical), lack of clear workshop definition or meeting purpose, and characteristics of the project all affect the risk of on-time completion.
12 PMI (Project Management Institute) Planning Steps Applied to Managing Multiple Workshops
- Define the scope and list project phase deliverables needed
- Identify checkpoints in the process
- Determine business function and personnel involvement
- Identify workshop deliverables and agendas
- Identify approaches and procedures required
- Schedule opening and closing sessions
- Develop schedules and organize sessions so they feed information properly
- Schedule participants
- Match facilities and session leaders
- Schedule preparation time
- Finish schedule and apply calendar dates
- Adjust as needed
-
IDENTIFY PRODUCT OR PROJECT DELIVERABLES
The purpose of this step is to identify the products produced by the project. Product or project deliverables define the expected output of the workshops—the session deliverables. Consequently, the project deliverables indicate the needed type of workshop and who participates.
- List the project deliverables (e.g., requirements document) needed for the phases included in the facilitated efforts.
- Organize these chronologically and into logical groupings.
- Define or obtain an example of what the session deliverable should look like to support the project deliverables.
-
ID CHECKPOINTS
The identification of checkpoints is often the easiest way to partition workshops and their session deliverables. This partitioning helps you schedule workshops based on the output expected rather than forcing a workshop based on a methodology or life cycle. Therefore, this second step of partitioning often defines the number and types of workshops required.
- Identify logical checkpoints in the process.
- Often these checkpoints include a walk-through or phase review. These identify when to review deliverables.
-
DETERMINE BUSINESS FUNCTIONS
This step adds the second of four variables—participant resource availability—to the planning process. It validates the groupings completed in steps one and two as well as provides a functional partitioning for the identification of workshops.
- Identify the business areas, functions, and people (potential participants) required to or involved in producing each of the session deliverables.
- Group the participants by function.
-
DEFINE WORKSHOP DELIVERABLES
This step breaks down the project deliverables into various components built in each workshop—further defining the output of each workshop. It builds on the required project deliverable, the organization, and the personnel involved and identifies what to produce in segmented pieces and what those pieces look like.
- Build a hierarchical chart as the one illustrated in the sample (at the end of this section) organizing the boxes by the deliverables identified in step one.
- Indicate the checkpoints identified in step two.
- Follow the guidelines in the next steps identifying three- to four-day efforts.
- Identify the session deliverable of each.
-
ID APPROACHES
This step identifies the necessary approach and workshops required to produce the workshop deliverables and uses or modifies the results from step four. Therefore, you develop a sense of the draft agendas.
- Identify the appropriate approach for each group of session deliverables and functions identified in steps three and four.
- Review to ensure that each workshop covers only three or four days—adjust the sub-boxes of step four accordingly.
- Identify which sessions will require multiple workshops (i.e., two or three, three-day workshops for one session).
-
SCHEDULE OPENING AND CLOSING
This step ensures that you do not forget to kick off or close with a structured technique. Subsequently, this step establishes the calendar dates. For large projects, a general opening session avoids many small opening sessions.
- Schedule at least one half-day beginning workshop (opening kickoff) overall.
- Schedule one half-day review session for each checkpoint identified in step two.
- Identify any pre-session education required (e.g., packages, technology, etc.) that aid the process. Schedule these accordingly.
- Schedule the wrap-up session—This can be a structured walk-through at the end of major project deliverables.
-
ORGANIZE FEEDS
This step verifies a correctly scheduled third variable—information needs and feeds. If the flow of the workshops is incorrect, there will be a great deal of retrofitting. Therefore, perform this step with great care.
- Review the flow of work and information from one functional area to the next.
- Review any information models and data flow diagrams that exist that identify how one function feeds another.
- Organize the workshops so that the information (output) from one workshop feeds the next workshop—not the other way around using the information gathered as part of the reviews above.
-
SCHEDULE PARTICIPANTS
This step assigns participants to workshops and ensures that critical resource problems do not occur. Consequently, the remaining steps schedule the dates and facilities.
- Build a schedule or hierarchy of the workshops.
- List the names of the participants in each workshop.
- Adjust the schedule to avoid over-scheduling any participants or creating critical resource problems (i.e., one or two critical people involved for too long a time in consecutive workshops).
-
MATCH FACILITIES AND SESSION LEADERS
This step applies workshop resources—the fourth variable defined (rooms and people) to the workshops defined earlier. It uses the risk assessment process defined in Risk Analysis to provide the proper session leaders, schedule facilities, identify parallel sessions, and correct critical session leader resources. Additionally, this step iterates with the next two steps.
- Assign each workshop to any available rooms.
- Review the schedule to determine possible parallel sessions.
- Schedule a session leader for no more than ten workshop days
in a month.
-
SCHEDULE PREP TIME
This step schedules the preparation time for each workshop. It accomplishes the scheduling of session leaders and parallel sessions. After that, you can compare your workload capacity with resource availability.
- Schedule appropriate preparation time for each workshop.
- For single workshop projects, preparation requires from one to three days for every workshop day. Schedule preparation for one to two weeks ahead of the workshop.
- For large projects, with multiple workshops, preparation is one to four weeks of effort scheduled two to five weeks before the first workshop. Adequate coordination and agenda preparation requires an additional day per workshop. See the sample project plan at the end of this section.
- On large projects, schedule enough time between sessions to ensure that the participants have an opportunity to review previous documentation (i.e., prepare themselves) so that they are ready to attend the upcoming workshops.
- Adjust the schedule as necessary to ensure proper preparation and non-workshop review between sessions.
-
APPLY CALENDAR
The purpose is to apply calendar dates to the proposed schedule. It also adjusts for holidays and other days off work by taking the proposed logical schedule and applying physical attributes to it (calendar dates). Therefore, the schedule from this point on becomes more commitment.
- Apply calendar dates to the workshops.
- Apply the calendar dates so that at least one week out of four
is spent in non-workshop activities such as reviewing
previous work.
- Adjust the schedule as necessary depending on holidays, management directives, project goals, or personnel vacations.
-
SCHEDULE AND ADJUST
This step of the planning process turns the plan into a schedule. Above all, this step must not violate any of the flow or resource guidelines stated in steps seven through ten.
- Schedule the workshops with the participants involved. This may be by a meeting or a memo.
- Adjust the schedule as needed to ensure that the participants attend.
Estimating Meeting Duration for Specific Deliverables
- If a business is not clearly defined or widely differing opinions exist among the business people about the process they do or should go through, then schedule one high-level session to further scope the business (Context Diagram workshop) before defining what and how many detailed sessions to hold.
- Define a discrete purpose for each multiple-day session. If the session appears to have two or more major reasons for existence, then it probably ought to be two or more sessions.
- Participants for high-level workshops (Project Planning, Activity Flows, Context Diagram, Logical Modeling) come from diverse work backgrounds. However, for detailed workshops, the participants may work in only one or two areas. If it appears that there are many areas represented in a detailed session, the scope is probably too broad and you should break it into further and discrete sessions.
- A two-day detailed Activity Flows workshop provides enough requirements for numerous Detailed Design approaches.
- Adjust your estimates based on project or technique risk (see
Risk Management). Low-risk results shorten times. High-risk results extend times.
- A two- or three-day Activity Flows workshop provides the following:
- Definition of a business process for a given area (specified scope).
- Problem identification and high-level requirements for a major portion of any project or initiative.
- A two- or three-day Activity Flow combined with a two- or three-day Logical Modeling workshop covers the following:
- Requirements for a new product or a software package that automates a focused business area (e.g., forecasting).
- Redefinition of a business (e.g., redefining an existing process; e.g., insurance agent commissions).
- Planning sessions require two for Project Planning and three days for Organizational Design. The sessions may conclude quicker if you and your participants prepare thoroughly.
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 6, 2016 | Meeting Support, Meeting Tools
Meeting graphics such as illustrations capture concepts and ideas that substitute for words. Why should we care about meeting graphics and illustrations?
Meeting graphics can substitute for words. Illustrations, icons, and symbols make it easier to capture complex ideas and concepts. Hence, making it easier to build consensus and get meeting participants to . . .
- Agree on concepts
- Create a memorable strategic plan for vision, mission, and objectives
- Explore complex ideas
- Find common ground and overcome communication problems
- Identify key problems
- “See” what we mean
- Visualize the scope of issues
We typically depend on the written or spoken word to express our ideas. Professional facilitators extend beyond narrative. Thus they enable groups to better and more fully express themselves.
Facilitator’s Role
The facilitator’s role makes it easier for groups of people to communicate effectively. Participants use all of their senses to communicate, not solely sound. We interpret what we see and hear—but each one interprets it differently. When one person has a vision of the business, that vision is buried in the back of the mind. They hold an image that is different than the image in the back of the mind of the next person.
For example, if you heard the term “building,” what pops into your mind? Is it a verb? Does it represent a noun? Is the building two stories, a skyscraper, or a house? Words leave much to the interpretation of the person hearing them. If we draw pictures to support words, we embrace more senses and increase the precision of the message.
Why are Graphics Important?
Graphics leverage the logic that “Pictures are worth a thousand words”. Images help us communicate and cross cultural boundaries. Notice that international road signs are symbols—not words. The terms “house,” “casa,” or “Maison” are less important than understanding what we are talking about a . . .
Meeting Graphics
Hence, other graphic examples include blueprints, maps, process flow diagrams, and analytical models. Most of these can be described using words. However, few narratives are as clear as ideas supported with the appropriate graphics.
Seven Graphic Formats
Seven different graphic formats are useful at differing stages of meetings and workshops. The seven formats, from least complex to most complex, are:
- Poster—a central theme
- List—a sequenced list of ideas
- Cluster—an arranged collection of ideas
- Matrix—a forced comparison of ideas
- Diagram—a model of an idea
- Drawing—a metaphor or image of the idea
- Mandala—a unifying, centered image
Each graphic format provides an increasingly complex layer to help the group’s understanding and commitment.
Application
Designing a workshop requires understanding and coordinating several issues and people. Stepping through the seven formats, we may use a . . .
- Poster—to announce the workshop, date, time, and place.
Poster
- List—the items that must be available for the workshop.
List
- Cluster—to organize items into appropriate groups, such as roles, logistics, and actions.
Cluster
- Matrix—to associate a role to the action or logistics for which the role is responsible.
Matrix
- Diagram—to lay out the workshop room in two dimensions.
Diagram
- Drawing—to illustrate a three-dimensional view of the workshop room to help us visualize the environment.
Drawing
- Mandala—to pull all of the elements together illustrating how each relates and how each contributes to the overall success of the workshop.
Mandala
Roadblocks
Many facilitators are afraid to use graphics because:
- “How do I turn them into words or actions?”
- “I’m not artistic enough.”
- “The participants don’t think they are artistic enough.”
- “The participants won’t like it.”
- “When do I use them?”
Unfortunately, we have been taught to “stay within the lines.” In workshops, drawing a stick figure is just as effective as drawing a well-proportioned figure. The idea is to communicate. Take confidence that content is more important than presentation. Facilitators need to become comfortable with both drawing images and using graphics in gathering ideas. They should also feel comfortable asking their participants to draw out their ideas. Learning some simple approaches and becoming comfortable drawing simple lines and circles helps us find the “child within” that encourages using graphics.
In Workshops
Therefore, it is not enough to be comfortable drawing pictures. One key problem with graphics and workshops is “When do I use them and how?” Knowing ‘which graphic format to use when’ is important for a facilitator. Using a matrix to define a vision is ineffective. Using a drawing to identify roles and responsibilities becomes too complex. The graphic is the means to an end. Knowing the end and finding the appropriate means makes for a more effective workshop. Realize that graphic formats help people think through a problem when developing consensual solutions.
Use different graphics at different points to help an organization develop a strategic plan—a vision of where they are going. Drawings help with vision and mission (The ‘Coat-of-arms’ tool works wonderfully for a mission). Listing supports objectives, strategies, and critical success factors. As a complement, illustrate your entire strategic plan as an evolving mandala. Create your mural with the various elements as you develop them.
Do’s and Don’ts
The following provides basic guidelines for using graphics during meetings and workshops:
- Do make graphics a means to an end. Don’t make them the reason for the effort.
- Don’t worry about content. Don’t worry about “artistry”.
- Do explain instructions clearly. Don’t be vague or too restrictive.
- Do let them know that this is important—part of the process. Don’t let them think that this is “just fun stuff”.
- To learn if it doesn’t work. Don’t get worried if it doesn’t work. Fail fast.
Summary
Facilitators need to use more graphics in their workshops. More than creating presentations, our responsibility makes it easier for people to communicate. Verbal/ language communication is one of the vaguest tools we have as people. We should support the narrative with graphics. As session leaders, we should prepare the right tool for the right problem. Often, facilitators get a new hammer and everything looks like a nail. To avoid that, develop a clear understanding of which format to use. Determine what it does for the group and where to take it next to get DONE.
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
