This guide is a working document intended to evolve inline with the Discovery Session Enablement. Please share your thoughts and ideas on how to make it better. Add them as issues to the repository and they will be incorporated.
This document was created to acompany the face to face Discovery Session Enablement Slide Deck. Most of the practices used can be found in the Open Practice Library. The Customer Canvas have been inspired by the Discovery Map of the Mobius Toolkit.
- Kick off
- Why Canvas
- Who Canvas
- Pains & Gains Canvas
- Target Outcomes Canvas
- Market Overview
- Gathering Technical Requirements
- Wrap Up
- Output
This class will work best for 9-12 people (3-4 groups of 3). [TODO confirm]
For growing the facilitation pool, we strongly recommend a three stage approach:
- Attend and complete the Enablement in full as a participant.
- Attend a subsequent Enablement again but shadow the Facilitator team with some opportunities to present.
- Be a primary facilitator on a subsequent Enablement.
- Sticky notes e.g. Postit, multiple colours and multiple sizes as per facilitation guidelines 76x76 mm, 127x76mm, 203x152mm
- Permanent markers, e.g. Sharpies(enough for one per participant + a few extra)
- Whiteboard markers - multiple colours
- Coloured masking tape e.g. BAM! Tape
- Sticky flipchart paper or magic whiteboard
- Timer e.g. Time Timer
- Recordable Buttons - 1-2 per team
- Cover Story printout (if using this practice for why)
- Customer Canvas Printout(Optional) - this can be created using materials from facilitation kit
- Business drivers magnets - a set for each participant
- Swag from Marketing for each participant
- Facilitation Kit for each participant [TODO - confirm]
- Open Practice Library Cards for each participant
- Think about the summary of the Enablement, a short video or collection of pictures may be a good idea. You may want to bring a special camera like GoPro. Do not forget to capture the whole Team photo for the summary.
- Catering during the day, Team Dinner or social event at the end of day 1. Advanced booking may be required.
- Lots of writable wall/windows space for different canvas and Team exercises
- Projector that supports HDMI
- Ability to play sound from laptop
Setting-up the room will require time, so bear that in mind before planning the Enablement. Ideally you will be able to access the room a day before or at least 1 hour before the Enablement starts. Following canvas should be created and populated accordingly if required:
Use 127x76mm sticky notes to build backlog with agenda items. Activities should match sections of the enablement planned for two days e.g.
- Kick off
- Target Outcomes
- Team Forming & Social Contract
- Discovery Session Agenda and Customer Canvas
- Why Canvas
- Who Canvas
- Pains & Gains Canvas
- Target Outcomes Canvas
- Market Overview
- Gathering Technical Requirements
- Wrap Up
- Output
Build the standard kanban (To Do, Doing, Done)using for example masking tape. Place all agenda activities in the to do column.
Think what you want the attendees to walk away with.
Example Target Outcomes:
- Participants have shared understanding of the phases of discovery session
- Attendees can identify practices helpful for each phase can co-facilitate them
- Participants know where to look for more information about the practices
- Attendees enjoyed the training
Establishing the "definition of done" helps the facilitator and the team understand when given activity is complete and makes facilitation of the enablement smoother.
Example Definition of done:
- Facilitators presented the sections
- Each person attempted to use the practice for their use case within their group
- Relevant section of Customer Canvas has been updated
- Parking lot has been updated
Ue the masking tape and sticky notes. Place plus or smiley face above the line and minus or sad face below the line.
-
- 1-2 Recordable buttons - Permanent Markers - White Board Markers - Sticky notes (various colours and sizes) enough to run all practices planned for the enablement - Masking Tape - Writeable Surface Area for team activities (Social Contract, Team Name) - Sticky flipchart paper - Printouts of canvas if required
Most of the practices used in this enablement can be found in the Open Practice Library, you can browse it ahead of the session to find more information about facilitation tips. One handy technique for facilitation of some of these practices could be 1-2-4-all by Liberating structures
Start with an Icebreaker, below are four examples that can also be used running the real discovery session
- Colaborative Face Drawing - The collaborative face drawing is a fun interactive activity that helps with name memorization.
Running the activity:
---------------------
Give each participant a A5 sticky note and a pen. Instruct the participants to write their name on the bottom of the paper
Ask everyone to find someone they haven't met before and talk to them. Instruct the pair to exchange the papers
Everyone should draw the other person eyes.Instruct the pairs to exchange the papers again
(now each person should have the paper with their name again)
Repeat steps 3 to 8 for all face parts
(eyes, noise, ears, chin, hair, facial hair and accessories)
- ESVP – Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer, Prisoner - This is a short activity to measure participants’ engagement for the meeting at hand
Running the activity
---------------------
1. Ask each participant to assign themselves a role in the enablement as an Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer or Prisoner.
– Explorers – Are eager to discover new ideas and insights.
They want to learn everything they can about the discovery session.
– Shoppers – Will look over all the available information,
and will be happy to go home with one useful new idea.
– Vacationers – Aren’t interested in the work of the enablement,
but are happy to be away from the daily grind.
– Prisoners – Feel that they’ve been forced to attend
and would rather be doing something else.
2. Acknowledge the results and guide a discussion about what the results mean for the group
- Visual phone - Visual phone is a great energizer to get everyone engaged while fostering a conversation about communication and interpretations.
Running the activity
---------------------
Break the large group into groups of three people
(one or two groups can have four people)
Place three post it and a pen in front of each person
Ask everyone to write a sentence (on a post it),
then place a blank post it on top of it
(for now only the sentence author knows it)
Everyone pass the post it clockwise
Each person read the sentence from the post it in front of them,
and then create a representative drawing for the sentence (on the blank post it)
Everyone pass the post it clockwise.
On a new post it, each person write a sentence for the drawing in front of them,
and place it on top of the post it set (now the set has 3 post its; the original sentence, the drawing, and the new sentence)
Everyone pass the post it set clockwise (for the groups of three people, the set should end in front of the original sentence writer)
Open the post it set so everyone can see the sentences and respective drawings.
This is a great energizer with a sublime massage about communication (visual and written), context and interpretations.
- Agile Animals a.k.a. Spirit Animals - great short activity that can be combined with introductions.
Running the activity
---------------------
Draw a simple representation of an animal that you feel represents your current mood. Hang on to these.
Introduce yourself to the group and share your animal.
- What is your name?
- Where are you from?
- What is your current role in your organization?
- Show and Tell: your animal drawing
- Sticky Notes multiple colours
- Sharpie Pens (1 per person) on each table
-
Everyone writes on a sticky note what they want to achieve in these 2 days. One idea per note.
All the objectives are then placed on session objectives canvas. Use affinity mapping to group them into similar topics (no more than 4-5). Name each group of topics. Ensure to review them at the end of the class! -
Introduce agile agenda and definition of done. Explain when activities can be moved to the done state. Explain how parking lot/car park works. Provide na example.
Read out Target outcomes for the 2 days and see how they compare to the session expectations the group provided.
Mention the real time retro, ask the group to update it constantly. Check that canvas frequently and if possible react to some items you can fix to demonstrate the power of real time retrospective.
This will be used to mix the groups so we there are different levels of Discovery Session expertise in each of the groups.
They need to achieve that by self organising and talking to each other.
Depending on the group size ask everyone to count from 1 to 3 or 4 then group 1s together, 2s together etc.
TIME BOX: 5 minutes
Introduce the practice of Social Contracting, how we use it and show some examples of real Social Contract artefacts. This will also include a short interactive exercise for each table group to do some team formation and write a social contract.
- Sticky Notes multiple colours
- Sharpie Pens (1 per person) on each table
- Flip-chart or Magic Whiteboard paper
- Tape or bluetac to fix paper to wall (if using flip-chart paper)
- Recordable buttons with batteries
-
Present the slides to introduce Social Contracting, what it is, why we use it and share some real life examples
-
Kick off the interactive exercise:
- In table groups, take the opportunity to (once again) say hello to each other
- Talk about how they want to work with each other and capture key behaviours on large sticky notes to form the social contract
- Encourage everyone to sign their social contract
- Encourage each table to come up with a team name (to help the idea of team identity)
- Encourage each table to use one of the recordable buttons to record their team noise (to help with the cultural and fun aspects we want to inject into the atmosphere throughout this enablement)
-
Overall group Social Contract
- Have each group playback key points in their Social Contract and call out any that they would like applicable to the whole group. One of the the facilitators should capture these as a Group Social Contract
- Encourage a consensus on the times to take for breaks / lunches up front.
- Again, encourage everyone to sign the big group Social Contract
-
Ensure that everyone is on the same page and completed the pre-requisites.
-
Review Assumptions with the class.
-
Introduce materials they need for the discovery Session
-
Explain room set-up, use artefacts built in the room for enablement as examples
-
Talk about flow and agenda for the discovery Session
-
Introduce Customer Canvas.
-
Explain the use case:
Submitting a proposal for running RHTE 2021
Using the discovery session to populate the customer canvas for everything which is needed to create a proposal:
The Canvas: Why
The Canvas: Pains & Gains
The Canvas: Who
The Canvas: Target Outcomes
Each section of the enablement will cover practices for uncovering the information
Explain the Why section of the canvas ad invite set the scene for 2 practices.
Start by imagining your end result and risks along the way. Then work backward to figure out the steps you’ll need to get there.
Set a long term goal. Get optimistic hat: (15 mins)
Ask: Why are we here today and what does success looks like to us? Where do we want to be in six months (short term goal), a year, or even five years (long term goal) from now?
List questions. Get pessimistic hat. (15 mins)
Ask: How could we fail? What do we need to do to get there think backward steps.
Facilitator tips: Turn these fears into questions and list those questions in the whiteboard.
Cluster: (10 mins)
Ask the team to cluster and group them in short term vs long term goal
Draw a map: (20 mins)
Finally draw backwards on a map of a system, journey starting from the end goal
- When defining what success looks like, it may be helpful to focus on goal setting from the perspective of the customer and business.
Identify what value or success looks likes for your customer. Then define what value you are looking to achieve for your business.
- The technique forces participants to think about failure, which many teams never do.
It’s surprising how much you can learn about a domain just by getting participants to share their fears.
- It’s easy to communicate the results of the session in slide ware and project rooms.
We’d recommend keeping the results up in the project space throughout your effort.
- https://gamestorming.com/cover-story/
- Sprint “How to solve big problems and test new ideas in 5 days”, Jake Knapp
============================================
Cover story is a Design Thinking practice forces participants to start with the end mindset.
The team is encouraged to visualise, image and even sketch their wildest ideas and plant seeds for the future state of the organisation so spectacular that they have put the business on the cover of a well-known magazine.
- Divide the team into 4-6 people
- Draw out large-scale templates that include the categories as listed in the image.
- Define each category on the template
- Diverge: Ask the team to populate the template with the sticky note and write and draw together (5-10 mins)
- Emerge: Ask the team to quietly imagine their best case scenario story relates to them quietly - (5 mins)
- Converge: Ask the team to agree on one one topic and generate the “story of the year” and represent it on their team collaboratively. (30 - 45 mins)
- Discuss: Ask in the room what they observed, any insights and concerns about the future state (5-10 mins)
This game is about the wildest dream for the organization—that has already happened!
So, when you set up this game as the meeting leader, speak about their “successes” with enthusiasm and in the past tense.
Encourage the players to use the past tense in their brainstorming and story creation. And don’t let the group go into analysis mode.
This game is not about logic, pragmatism, or parameters.
Cover Story is an open-ended, creative-thinking exercise, so tell the players to be wary of any “reality checks” from other players.
And as the small groups present their visions to the large group, note and discuss any common themes that arise.
These themes—however fantastical—are telling, because commonalities reveal shared hopes and also plant seeds for real possibilities.
If this play is part of a longer group process, post these visions around the room so that they serve as reference points for continued
ideas and inspiration.
What other practices can be used? Point to the Open Practice Library
After wrapping up the session, allow 15-20 min for Retrospective and confidence voting.
- Gather the group in the circle
- Run roman voting on each target outcome of the Session
- Run the "one takeaway" retro around the circle