Brainstorming has long been held as the best way to get ideas from teams for decades, but what if we are wrong? Can we take the successful aspects of collaboration and create a better environment for quality concepts? Come learn about brainwriting and get more from your team today!

If you work in an office, you have probably participated in a brainstorming session or two (or 12). Invented in the 1940s by an advertising executive, the purpose was to solicit many ideas in a short period of time. By putting a collective of creative people in the same room, better concepts should come. Sounds very agile. 

However, science has shown several times that brainstorming not the best way to generate ideas. It’s cumbersome due to all of the interdependent activities happening at once. When spending time generating ideas as a group, you often spend more time thinking of others ideas than your own. 

Fortunately, a relatively unknown technique is starting to gain popularity called brainwriting. Incorporating it into your team events can produce more diverse ideas and provide a friendlier environment for collaboration. In this session, we will workshop them and leave the audience with all of the tools to bring the technique back to their offices.

What Makes It Compelling:

I was skeptical when I first read an article on the technique, mainly because I had always believed brainstorming produced quality ideas. As a “stickies and sharpies” type of coach, I’d seen so many teams collectively throw out ideas during planning and retrospective sessions. But in the ensuing weeks, I started seeing where the article was on point in terms of producing quality ideas.

After contrasting the ideas generated after using brainwriting for a few weeks, my mind was changed forever. Even better was the events themselves didn’t seem that different to teams. 

Speed.

It's been a driver in our industry before it was even an industry. The more Agile becomes more mainstream, the more we think it's part of the package. Books are out promising that certain frameworks can deliver twice as much in half the time. And yet, teams still struggle delivering what's expected of them.

Once I started asking people of all levels of leadership what they thought speed would give them, it allowed me to develop some experiments around those expectations.

Please join me for a case study where we discuss the need for speed, the origins of that desire, and the ways it manifests itself into deliverables. My desire is for the audience to take away some powerful learning into their places of work. Only by understanding the expectations around speed can we reset them into an environment built around trust and support for motivated individuals.

Speed.

It's been a driver in our industry before it was even an industry. The more Agile becomes more mainstream, the more we think it's part of the package. Books are out promising that certain frameworks can deliver twice as much in half the time. And yet, teams still struggle delivering what's expected of them.

Once I started asking people of all levels of leadership what they thought speed would give them, it allowed me to develop some experiments around those expectations.

Please join me for a case study where we discuss the need for speed, the origins of that desire, and the ways it manifests itself into deliverables. My desire is for the audience to take away some powerful learning into their places of work. Only by understanding the expectations around speed can we reset them into an environment built around trust and support for motivated individuals.

Let's experiment with several creativity tools (a Ball of Whacks, X-Ball & Y-
Ball, etc. https://creativewhack.com) and brain storm some ways to relate Agile concepts to this very abstract tool for creativity exploration.

We will create new never before seen games - using well known processes and new toys to the Agile community.

I have the creativity tools - you have the brain.  Let's put them together and invent a new use for an existing tool, and a new game for Agile teams to learn old concepts.  We will use several play frameworks; LEGO Serious Play framework will be overviewed and incorporated into our play.  Also we will incorporate "Agile Game Incubator" workshop outline by McGreal & McCullough.

“Move fast and break things.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Mobile is no longer a hobby for companies. In that world, speed is the key. My company embraced the principle of “welcoming changing requirements, even late in development.” It’s allowed us to grow, and we have accomplished some amazing things.

It’s also caused some challenges for teams. They felt the pain of this pace, and our clients were frustrated by delayed releases.

This presentation describes a 3-month case study I ran to measure things like team communication, productivity, and quality while implementing Scrum for the first time. The results were convincing, and allowed us to learn what happens when you value speed more than anything else.

I hope you’ll join me in seeing how we learned to work smarter instead of harder.

“Move fast and break things.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Mobile is no longer a hobby for companies. In that world, speed is the key. My company embraced the principle of “welcoming changing requirements, even late in development.” It’s allowed us to grow, and we have accomplished some amazing things.

It’s also caused some challenges for teams. They felt the pain of this pace, and our clients were frustrated by delayed releases.

This presentation describes a 3-month case study I ran to measure things like team communication, productivity, and quality while implementing Scrum for the first time. The results were convincing, and allowed us to learn what happens when you value speed more than anything else.

I hope you’ll join me in seeing how we learned to work smarter instead of harder.

“Move fast and break things.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Mobile is no longer a hobby for companies. In that world, speed is the key. My company embraced the principle of “welcoming changing requirements, even late in development.” It’s allowed us to grow, and we have accomplished some amazing things.

It’s also caused some challenges for teams. They felt the pain of this pace, and our clients were frustrated by delayed releases.

This presentation describes a 3-month case study I ran to measure things like team communication, productivity, and quality while implementing Scrum for the first time. The results were convincing, and allowed us to learn what happens when you value speed more than anything else.

I hope you’ll join me in seeing how we learned to work smarter instead of harder.