Ask for parting takeaways

Parting Takeaways

In a collaborative design and software development process, groups of people often gather in a meeting to share information or collaborate to create a model or design. In these sessions participants often have important little epiphanies - little important discoveries of information, solutions, or problems that they consider important takeaways for the meeting.

Disbanding a group before sharing key takeaways leaves team members less informed than they could be and misses an important collaboration opportunity.

Those responsible for communicating ideas during a meeting or collaborative work session are often concerned that their ideas really were communicated. Those concerned with managing product design or project risks would like to know about any concerns people are walking out of a meeting with. All meeting participants benefit from knowing their biggest concerns, good or bad, have been expressed and heard by the team. It's tough to discuss all this information during the meeting since it may be premature. Takeaways, after all, are taken away at the end of a meeting after everything else has transpired.

Using a simple parting takeaways exercise to make public these parting takeaways.

• Start by asking everyone in the meeting to think about the idea that's forefront in their mind as a result of this meeting. It could be a good idea, a concern, or an "ah-ha" moment that occurred during the sessions.
• Invite each person to share this thought with the team using a couple short sentences. Team members should try to take 30 seconds or less.
• Other team members should avoid comments or questions. If they have them, they can ask them privately after the meeting has disbanded.
• Someone volunteer to start by giving their takeaways. Continue around the circle, clockwise since it seems natural to everyone, giving a couple sentences of takeaways.

In some situations it may be valuable to capture the takeaways to use for later representation. A documenter or recorder could quietly record what participants say. But, be aware, people may be a bit less candid if they know their comments are being recorded.

Parting takeaways feels a bit like a stand-up meeting you might practice in an Agile environment. But, where a standup meeting has more of an objective of helping people plan and coordinate their work, takeaways ask participants to reflect on what they're thinking.

Participants listening in on parting takeaways are often surprised or reassured by hearing what others are thinking. They often find that they're not alone in their opinions or concerns.

Answering specific questions

Alternatively you might ask participants to answer specific questions. The three I commonly use are:

1. What did you find most valuable about this session?
2. What was your biggest disappointment in this session?
3. What was your biggest surprise in this session?

A technique like this is commonly used in sessions facilitated by ThoughtWorks and referred to as a "temperature check."

Written takeaways

I've seen Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering use what he calls a "1 Minute Test" At the conclusion of a meeting, presentation, or work session, Jared passes out a small slip of paper with three questions on it.

1. What was the "Big Idea"?
2. What was your "Big Surprise"?
3. What is your "Big Question"?

Collect and consolidate these sheets to help your team effectively plan its next work session.

This approach, while valuable to facilitators and the core team consolidating and communicating information, doesn't allow participants to hear what each other is thinking.