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Agile Development Outside-In

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Build up a tool kit of collaboration supplies
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Collaborative work session

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Collaboration techniques support work sessions

To help make collaborative work sessions more productive, and to support ad hoc day to day collaboration, a few valuable techniques will come in handy.

Following the basic structure of a collaborative work session is a good start to collaborating effectively. As you're modeling in a collaborative setting it's important to keep pace fluid. Not having the right tool at the right time can slow you down and cause you to break stride enough to disrupt the flow of a collaborative group. A few simple techniques can keep information flow high, and avoid unnecessary discussion, disagreement, or confusion.

Before going into that first session, building up a tool chest full of supplies and techniques. This section indexes the foundational techniques you'll likely use in every collaborative work session.

Prepare

You'll prepare for collaborative work sessions many times throughout a design and development process. Over time you'll get faster at it. You'll find that you can prepare many things ahead of time and reuse them for each work session - thinks such as a kit of supplies.

Build up a tool kit of collaboration supplies technique

To keep the pace of collaborative work high and communication effective, keep a tool kit of supplies ready to collect and model information.

Perform

While performing a collaborative work session you'll use techniques to help keep the pace high, and the team focused on their objectives. You'll use common modeling techniques over and over such as affinity diagramming and prioritization. You'll have common ways of closing your meeting such as shooting a model movie and asking for parting takeaways.

Kicking off

Use parking lots to defer discussion foundation-technique

During work sessions when tangential but important ideas come up, defer them for later discussion by writing them into a list in the wall. When ideas of a particular type you'll need come up, such as glossary terms, label a parking lot with that type and place captured ideas there.
Pace keeping signals help groups self-regulate foundation-technique

When workshop participants start tangential conversations or belabor their points, use a sign to signal them and help keep work pace high.

Modeling

CardStorm to get ideas on the table foundation

Brainstorm directly onto index cards or stickies. Use CardStorming to quickly move through brainstorming to filtering, prioritizing, and modeling.
Filter and prioritize ideas foundation

Given a large number of ideas written on index cards or stickies use filtering and prioritizing to reduce the number of ideas to the most critical or divide into categories to deal with category by category. Use filtering and Prioritizing techniques ahead of modeling to control the size of the model or after modeling to identify important parts of a model.
Affinity Diagram foundation

Make sense of a large number of ideas by clustering them by affinity where similar ideas cluster together. Use an affinity diagram to distill notes taken from interviews, ideas captured during brainstorming, or to find commonalities in existing information.

Wrapping up

Ask for parting takeaways technique

Ask participants of a collaborative work session, meeting, or presentation to tell the group quickly what their thoughts are before leaving. Asking for parting takeaways helps build common understanding and empathy within the team, and helps provide valuable feedback for planning a next session.
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Communicate

Once you've concluded a work session, to make use of the information you've collected you'll need to budget time to clean up and document the model you've likely created. A small team my break away to develop an action plan for a next collaborative work session. And, those that participated in this one will want to see the outcome.

Model poster concept

Keep important information in large posters visible in the design and development area for continuous reference and discussion by the team.
Model photo foundation-technique

Photograph models to capture them as they were at the conclusion of a modeling session. Leverage these photos to create more detailed documentation as necessary.
Electronically Document Models foundation-technique

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