“A small idea with wings will take you higher than a big one with legs.”
To get such ideas it’s always necessary to have brainstorming sessions in teams. This brainstorming session may provide two basic results. The first is which team feels accomplished, energized, and excited for the next step whereas in second-team feels unproductive and negative about the ideas. There are various reasons which may cause the brainstorming sessions to fail some of the typical reasons among them are :
Extroverts cover up all the sessions, the extrovert and fast thinkers keep on running the sessions and leave very little room for others to discuss in sessions making the conversation unbalanced.
Awkward silence is created when the team is unprepared for the session. This creates an agonizing silence sometimes even the session needs to be cut short to remove everyone from such misery.
In some cases, the team gets anchored to only some specific ideas and avoids to flow of additional innovative ideas. They kept themselves anchored to the initial few ideas.
Today we will learn various techniques for brainstorming which makes team feel more productive, positive, and accomplished. His techniques will help to avoid these common issues in brainstorming and help in bringing the team together for yielding many creative ideas.
Brain Writing
In this technique two of the main common reasons, unbalancing conversation and anchoring are avoided. In this, every team member has to write three ideas related to the topic within the first 5 minutes. Once completed, members need to share their topic with another person of the group sitting on either side of them and then this other one will add bullet points in their topic. In such a way everyone will be able to share their idea and every idea will be getting in the process without hanging on the few ones. Finally, the best ideas from the overall list should be selected.
Star Bursting
In this technique, systematic questions are created keeping the primary idea in the center of it. The questions who, what, when, where, why, and how are written in the star form around the idea. The questions consist are;
Who are the target customers?
What are their specific categories?
When is the right time to launch this feature? And such.
These questions help to create a focus on the systematic market strategy. This method helps a group to investigate the topic from every angle.
Step Ladder
In this method the facilitator first shares some primary ideas with the team further he asks everyone to move out of the room except two. These two remaining members need to generate their ideas and need to further discuss the previously shared ideas in a limited time. Then one more person is invited inside to generate his idea and discussion on the previous one. Similarly, the one at a time person is invited up till the last one just as a ladder. This avoids anchoring, unbalanced conversation, and dominance within the group. This technique is not recommended for a large number of members in a group as it will take a lot of time.
Role Storming
In this technique, creative ideas are generated by asking and putting yourselves in the shoes of a well-known personality a boss, or any character you look up to. For example, how would Mark Zuckerburg solve such problems or such a situation? Even though this seems somewhat ridiculous or funny it will provide you with ideas to tackle the issues creatively. It gives members more confidence when their ideas are put on with some other great personality’s name.
Reverse Brainstorming
As the name itself suggest this process is about the reverse of brainstorming. The team in this technique is asked to think of all the negative ideas which are not going to work. They need to find ways to make a processor-required objective impossible. This will provide the details on what issues are there in the project. For example, instead of asking how to improve the product service, we will ask how we can make people reject our services.
Story Boarding
In this technique, a story is created on the board using customer experiences or steps they need to follow. This will help to generate ideas by putting the team in the customer’s shoes.
Brainstorming if effectively implemented will give various new ideas and solutions on issues. As we know, “the best way to have good ideas is to have a lot of ideas.”
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium and large organization across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting human centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitor.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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