5.
Have a clearly defined goal
Pick your team
Allow for divergence
Decide who to facilitate– Can it be your boss???
Stock your meeting room
How to run a session?
6. “Its easier to tone down a wild idea than to
think about a new one” – Alex Osborn
@NPradeepa
26.
Combine & extend ideas, not just harvest
Divergence & Convergence
Use it for more than just generating good ideas
Diligently follow the principles
It’s not the ONLY way to generate good ideas
Helpful Pointers
Everyday, Agile teams are solving real world complex problems. Real world complex problems require creative problem solving by team members. Brainstorming in its truest sense is intended to be a practical approach to creative problem solving. Alex Osborn along with his team in 1939, coined the term "Brainstorming" which means- "Using the brain to storm a creative problem and to do so in commando fashion, each 'stormer' audaciously attacking the same objective."
Allow for divergence– Even before the brainstorming session
Decide who to facilitate- – Hint!!!: It’s NOT your boss
Stock your room with papers, colorful post-its, color pencils, crayons, butcher paper, markers, clay, magazines, boxes, play-dohs, Legos, catalogs, camera, music player, stop watch/timer, snacks, comfortable room where people can move around, sit on the floor etc…
How many of us are used to “That’s not going to work!”, or inside their head/face expression, that idea sucks sure to throw a wet blanket on the creative fire, totally destroys trust. Facilitators, keep an eye out for this…
My personal story on – Went to Rob’s class on Scrum Master, lot of ideas on the flow-- worked with Lori on coming up with a Advanced Scrum Master class, on how we whiteboarded the flow and it was such a fulfilling session.
These are intended to overcome the fear of bad ideas, eliminate people's tendency to self-edit their ideas, and jump start people's creative skills before the real brainstorming begins.
Sometimes knowing what you don’t want will help you clarify what you want.
To use bad ideas to uncover great ideas
To clarify which features or elements your topic should avoid or eliminate
Brainstorms aren't just a place to generate good ideas. At IDEO, these gatherings support the company's culture and work practices in a host of other ways. Project teams use brainstorms to get inputs from people with diverse skills throughout the company. In the process, a lot of other good things happen. Knowledge is spread about new industries and technologies, newcomers and veterans learn—or are reminded—about who knows what, and jumping into a brainstorm for an hour or so to think about someone else's problem provides a welcome respite from each designer's own projects. The explicit goal of a group brainstorm is to generate ideas. But the other benefits of routinely gathering rotating groups of people from around a company to talk about new and old ideas might ultimately be more important for supporting creative work.
Brainstorming is just one of many practices that make a company creative, and it is of little value if it's not combined with other practices—such as observing users, talking to experts, or building prototype products or experiences—that provide an outlet for the ideas generated.