From Brainstorm to Blueprint: A 2-Day Problem-Solving Workshop (Part 2)
In this two-part series I share how I designed a workshop to accelerate problem definition and solution discovery for my team. In Part 1, I walked you through the Problem Space. Check that out if you haven’t already! In Part 2, we will explore the Solution Space.
DAY 2: THE SOLUTION SPACE
Exercise 1: Lightning Demos
After Day 1 wrapped up, I gave the group some “homework”. The task? Lightning Demos. This exercise involves the Sprint group researching existing solutions to their challenge and then presenting their findings to the group.
In a typical in-person setting, we’d spend up to 45 minutes individually researching on our computers. But since this was a remote workshop, we decided to go async. Everyone did their research on their own time and then we came together to share our findings. It was like a show-and-tell for solutions.
Day 2 kicks off with a virtual “art gallery” of ideas. Multiple boards filled with discoveries. It’s like an energizing museum tour where everyone talks through their ideas in more detail, and participants jot down interesting observations.
Here was the prompt for the group.
Exercise 2: The Idea Museum
In this individual brainstorming session, participants take inspiration from their Lightning Demos to sketch out potential solutions. Since we were virtual, there was no need for doodles—just our trusty post-its doing the heavy lifting.
Everyone then votes on the ideas that will best solve the challenges outlined in the Map exercise.
Arrange the ideas in a tree for visual clarity.
From here there are a few options. For the most part we knew that we would be acquiring a solution that solves these challenges for us. The exercise was still critical in helping us determine what features we would look for when researching. We had a requirement list and at this time we could have considered the workshop complete.
If you are working on a problem that will likely be an in-house solution, continue to the steps below. We still went through these steps because we wanted to explore if there were some quick things we could implement.
Exercise 3: Action Steps
At this point you have a prioritized list of what the team believes to be the most impactful ideas. Before you can prioritize the work, you want to break down these big ideas into smaller action steps. Ask yourself: how might we actually build this idea?
You’re aiming for an output like this:
Exercise 4: Prioritize
The final step is to prioritize the ideas in a 2x2. Now that the team has a clearer understanding of what is needed to bring the particular solution to life, the Effort x Impact exercise will be much easier.
And there you have it!
In just 2 days we went from defining a problem, exploring solutions, ranking ideas, breaking them down into smaller parts, and prioritizing them based on impact and effort! This was a huge win for the team. In the days that followed we were already speaking to vendors and assessing offerings based on the criteria we created together. Executing product discovery in a remote environment may feel daunting but with the right workshop you can achieve your outcome.
I believe this is a workshop that could work in many scenarios. If you give it a try, share your experience with me!