I.S.P.

information
systems
planning corp.

5361 Malaspina Place
North Vancouver
B.C.V7R 4L9

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Team collaboration and Brainstorming	Process Improvement	Understand markets	Design innovative products	Toyota's Lean approach	Workstation ergonomics

ISP home page> Performance Enhancement> Team collaboration

PMI April 18, 2007

Communication, team building, brainstorming and effective collaboration.

Agenda and brainstorming instructions
Time	Topic	Method	Time
6:30 pm	Communication	Presentation	20 min	Brian Mullen
	Brainstorming	Presentation	20 min	Brian Mullen
7 pm	Practical demonstration	Team Brainstorming	5 min
7:00	Silent brainstorm ideas on	Write 6 ideas on post it notes	10 min	Team
7:10	Collect Ideas	Post ideas on flipcharts	15 min	Team
7:25	Select most important ideas	Each person selects the most important idea to them.	5 min	Team
7:30	Sort main ideas	Facilitator gets team to sort main ideas from most important to least important.	20 min
7:50	Group sub ideas	Team groups remaining sub ideas under each main ideas in columns.	5 min
8 pm	Finish

How to build a winning organization and teams

Projects play a key role in success of organizations in bringing new products and services to market. Projects help organizations meet the challenges of change.

Create products that delight the customers.: Build brand name and market share.
Empower employees.: Educate them to make major decisions.
Continuous improve processes.: Continuous improvement implies change. Bureaucracies resist change. When threatened they circle wagons and fire inwards.
Focus on quality: The way to delight customers.
Reduce waste and environmental impact.: Make process more effective and reduce impact on the environment.

Compare Project Performance in different organizations

General Motors needs better design products to compete with the Japanese but cannot deliver. Both GM and Ford have withdrawn from the mini-van market. The Japanese design better products in less time with smaller teams.

Comparison of auto design engineering performance (1987)
	American auto design	Japanese auto design	Improvement
New car engineering hours	3 million	1.7 million	1.76 times
Project timeframe	60 months	46 months	1.3 times
Average team size	903	485	1.86 times
Team organization	Linear sequential process	Concurrent engineering
Specific projects	GM A10	Honda Accord	Chrysler
Project timeframe	7 years	3 years	18 months

Concurrent engineering more effective than sequential process

Promote communication and collaboration with

Open channels of communication
Share knowledge
Breakdown organizational barriers and silos.
Put one project manager in charge of the design project.
Breakdown organizational silos
Recruit full-time team members.
Colocate team members to promote communication.
Focus on reducing waste.

Building winning teams

Teamwork – effective collaboration. Collaboration more powerful than individual thinking. Sharing information essential for decision making.

Create shared vision of where you are going.: Combined with delighting the customer we need to know what the clients objectives and challenges are. Feeds directly into the decision making process.
Use effective methodologies and processes.: More effective methodologies can reduce time and shorten times and reduce project schedule.
Overcome shortage of Resources by making more effective use of existing resources.: Providing more effective processes allows people to accomplish better results in a shorter period of time.
Avoid unnecessary personality conflicts that drain team energies.

Communication plays a key role in building teams and managing change.

Communication challenges

How do your teams interact and share information? Are your teams organized to facilitate communication? What processes do you use to promote communication?

Limited Bandwidth: What is transmission rate? What is receiving rate?
Knowledge of receiver: Assimilating information depends upon your conceptual framework. Do sender and receiver speak the same language? Many people in a cross function team may have different terminology and different values. Think of talking to executives, architect, accountants, engineers and lawyers. Do sender and receiver share the same values?
Knowledge of sender: The sender must tailor their message to the level of the receiver.
Effectiveness of communication medium

Evaluate communication alternatives


Evaluation criteria	Collaborative workspaces	Documents and specifications	Brainstorming	Email	Verbal
Understandability		Very good
Preparation time		2 hours per page		10 minutes	Instantaneous
Multiple inputs	Yes	Limited	Yes
Evolve over time	Yes
Persistence				Long but fragmented	Short lived
Bandwidth					Narrow
Ability to drill down
Ability to enhance		Limited to author
Visibility of ideas		High	Good
Turnaround	Current	Weeks to months	Seconds	Minutes to hours	Seconds
# of messages / hour

Time to prepare a message reduces response time but increases comprehension.

Define client Objectives

Project planning saves time, money while improving quality and capacity

If you skip planning to save money your project actually costs more and takes longer

Impact of planning on project success
		Level of planning		Improvement
	Key Performance Indicators	L O W	H I G H	Percent
Schedule	Average Schedule Performance	24% over	20% under	44%
Budget	Average Performance Against Budget	12% over	4% under	16%
Capacity	Average Capacity attained at 6 months	85%	96%	11%
Utilization reliability	Average Plant up time at 6 months.	85%	100%	15%
	Total dollar return on high level of planning			42%

A report by the Construction Industry Institute in the US comparing projects shows planning saves time, money and improves the quality of the deliverables. The study included 44 projects in the cost range between $4 million and $350 million with a median of $26 million. The quality of planning was ranked on the seven following factors:

Groups represented on the Planning Team
Written project planning charter
Planning Execution Plan
Duration of the Pre-Planning Effort
Percent Design Complete at Authorization
Developed control guidelines
Execution Plan developed for Engineering, Procurement, Construction and start up.

Increase creativity, performance, collaboration and communication with brainstorming

70% of product cost determined by the time the design is completed.

Brainstorming is a key step in creative process to generate innovative, breakthrough ideas that give you a competitive edge.

Turbo brainstorming plays a key role in creative product design. Generation of multiple ideas shares knowledge and stimulates thinking. The flexibility of the process allows teams to move in unexpected directions as breakthrough ideas to be generated.

Usually this interaction takes place in meetings. Turbo brainstorming with post-it notes, accelerates many project phases and activities:

Turbo brainstorming with post-it notes, accelerates many project phases and activities:

Project planning
Risk analysis
Estimating duration and work effort to complete each task.
Work breakdown structure creation
Task identification and sequencing
Understanding client objectives
Exploring objects with goal hierarchies
JAD - joint application design sessions
Business process mapping of existing and new processes during Re-engineering
Deliverables specification
Designing new products
Problem-solving
Root-cause analysis
Impact analysis to evaluate pro's and con's of different alternatives.
Decision making
Action planning
Team building
Planning meeting agendas

Brainstorming Benefits

Open channels of communication.: Harvest team's ideas. Reduce chance of missing crucial information.
Deliver better results by considering more alternatives.: Brainstorming supports all phases of problem solving: capturing issues, understanding root causes, identifying alternative solutions, evaluating impact of each solution and evaluating alternatives.
Stimulate creative thinking and generate more alternatives.: Get people to think out of the box.
Share ideas and knowledge to deliver better better solutions.: Brainstorming is effective for experts to share knowledge and for novices to learn quickly so they can contribute.
Build high-performance teams through communication and overcoming major challenges.: Brainstorming helps problem solving which is a major team building exercise.
Speed team meetings by sixty percent and get better results.: Reduce three hour meetings to one hour and get better results.
Reduce conflict through better understanding of others' ideas.: Verbal discussion can generate misunderstanding and hard feeling.
Reduce resistance to change by involving more people in key decisions.: And listening to their ideas.

Planning turbo brainstorming sessions uses post-it notes to identify topics, allocate available time, assign roles to each participants and outline the agenda.

Brainstorming is better than one-on-one interviews for collecting information because information validated.

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Expedite projects with more effective meetings

Turbo brainstorming saves you time in meetings and produces better results. The table provides a comparison between traditional meetings and assumes you have ten people plus the facilitator in a meeting each with six ideas.

Turbo brainstorming reduces a three-hour meeting to 45 minutes.
Steps in the brainstorming process Traditional brainstorming Turbo brainstorming is faster and cheaper Improvement with turbo brainstorming

1. Collect sixty ideas from participants 60 minutes 10 minutes 6 times

2. Select and sort ten major ideas 60 minutes 15 minutes 4 times

3. Group sub ideas under major topics 60 minutes 5 minutes 12 times

4. Label groups 5 minutes 5 minutes same

Total time 3.75 hours .6 hours 6.4 times

Start 8:00 am 8:00 am

Finish 12:15 pm 8:45 am

Number of people 11 people 11 people

Cost per person per hour $100 $100

Cost to brainstorm Topic at $100/ hour $4,160 $640 6.5 times

Turbo brainstorming reduces a three-hour meeting to 45 minutes.
Steps in the brainstorming process	Traditional brainstorming	Turbo brainstorming is faster and cheaper	Improvement with turbo brainstorming
1. Collect sixty ideas from participants	60 minutes	10 minutes	6 times
2. Select and sort ten major ideas	60 minutes	15 minutes	4 times
3. Group sub ideas under major topics	60 minutes	5 minutes	12 times
4. Label groups	5 minutes	5 minutes	same
Total time	3.75 hours	.6 hours	6.4 times
Start	8:00 am	8:00 am
Finish	12:15 pm	8:45 am
Number of people	11 people	11 people
Cost per person per hour	$100	$100
Cost to brainstorm Topic at $100/ hour	$4,160	$640	6.5 times

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Turbo brainstorming compresses project duration. Because you can cover more topics in less time you can compress three four-hour meetings into a single three-hour meeting. This saves project schedule time, travel time, giving your project team more time to complete their project tasks.

Each topic can take 20 to 45 minutes so you can brainstorm four to six topics in a three-hour meeting. By covering topics faster you can reduce three four-hour meetings into a single three-hour meeting reducing cycle time from 15 days to 3 hours. This saves project time, team-meeting time and money while at the same time exploring topics in much more depth.

Turbo Brainstorming reduces schedule, effort and cost by expediting meetings.
You can accomplish in one meeting with turbo brainstorming what takes three ordinary meetings.	Three traditional three-hour meetings.	One three-hour meeting with Turbo brainstorming.	Improvement with Turbo brainstorming.
Number of three-hour meetings	3 meetings	1 meeting	66% reduction
Number of topics covered in depth	4 to 6	4 to 6	Better quality with more depth
Number of people (* add one facilitator)	10 people	11* people	Same
Level of participation	Low	High	Better participation
Buy-in to final results	Medium	Higher	Higher participant buyin
Elapsed schedule time depends upon time between meetings. For meetings one week apart the total elapsed time for three meetings would be two weeks compared to 3 hours.	15 days	3 hours	92% reduction in cycle time.
Cost per person per hour	$100	$100	Same
Cost per meeting	$3,000	$3,300	Same
Number of meetings	3 meetings	1 meeting	66% reduction
Total Cost for all meetings	$9,000	$3,300	64% reduction

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The biggest benefits of turbo brainstorming are improved quality of results, the reduction in cycle time, reduced cost of meetings and increased energy of team members.

With traditional meetings you have to publish results at the end of each meeting and refresh people's minds at the start of the next meeting. When you compress three meetings into one you can only have to write up the final results and can skip the interim results.

Turbo Brainstorming can reduce your meetings by 75% and produce better results. Turbo brainstorming energizes a team, stimulates thinking and leads to creative breakthroughs.

Turbo brainstorming has developed by ISP information systems planning corp.

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Turbo Brainstorming Patterns

Patterns capture the essence of a process. Brainstorming patterns help you structure the topics in a brainstorming session depending upon various situations you encounter.

Process/Pattern name

Steps within the process or pattern

1. Idea processing pattern

Ideas process may be plans, objectives, risks, requirements, deliverables, strategies, design features, .

Create ideas (Thinking, Brainstorming, Prototyping)
Capture ideas (Words, tables, diagrams, charts, databases, software)
Publish ideas (Web sites, journals, books, ).
Assign responsibility
Take action (projects, ).
Deliver results.
Achieve benefits.

2. Turbo brainstorming process

Each session may cover four to forty topics. Advanced agenda planning and preparation increases results of a brainstorming session.

Plan multi-topic brainstorming session.
Setup brainstorming room.
Brainstorm multiple topics in one session.
Plan action items from session.
Review session results with executive team.
Publish results of the session.

3. Brainstorm next topic

Each brainstorming topic takes between thirty and sixty minutes.

Identify topic.
Capture ideas on post-it notes.
Create planning workspace with flipcharts.
Organize tasks on flipcharts.
Group sub ideas under main ideas.
Label each group.

4. Plan Meeting Agendas

Meetings may consist of four topics in a half day meeting to 40 topics covered in a five day strategic planning session.

Identify objectives of the meeting
Identify participants for meeting
Identify time budgeted for meeting.
Identify topics to reach the objective
Sequence topics
Identify method for each topic
Assign responsibility for topic
Allocate time for each topic
Finalize agenda.
Notify presentation participants to prepare material.
Build agenda booklet

5. Debono's six thinking hats sequence

de Bono six thinking hats help speed creative thinking by a team.

Blue hat thinking - worn by the facilitator
White Hat thinking - Brainstorm what do we understand about the situation.
Greet Hat thinking - Brainstorm creative ideas
Yellow hat thinking - elaborate and refine ideas
Red hat thinking - how do we feel about the solution
Black hat thinking - what could go wrong with our solution

6. Project planning pattern

Tips to facilitate high-performance teams including skills assessment, Recruiting tips. Training and rehearsal.

Understand client objectives.
Explore budget, schedule, technical and operational constraints.
Identify risks that threaten project success.
Identify deliverables to meet client objectives.
Select process to produce each deliverable.
Develop strategy to complete project successful.
Identify resources required to deliver results.
Identify tasks to produce each deliverable.
Estimate effort and duration to for each work package.
Assign resources to tasks.
Develop project schedule and budget.
Level resource workloads.

7. Objective-setting pattern

Understanding client objectives key to satisfying clients. Often this involves developing a consensus amongst conflicting objectives of the project stakeholders.

Brainstorm client objectives.
Identify benefits from achieving each objective.
Create goal hierarchy.

8. Project scoping pattern

Scoping identifies which objectives, features, requirements, etc are either in scope, deferred to a later release or out of scope.

Decide items to scope.
Create workspace for each release.
Select release for each feature.
Analyze impact of each release decision.

9. Deliverables definition pattern

Deliverables are results or outputs from projects and tasks. Deliverables are elaborated during the requirements and design phases. The definition of deliverables forms the foundation for estimating.

Focus on deliverables before strategy and tasks.
Prepare statement of work defining deliverables.
Decide delivery method (build, buy, assemble) for each component.
Develop project standards and guidelines.
Define components for each deliverable.
Construct assembly sequence.
Design deliverables and components.
Create detailed plan for summary task cell in Master Project with Matrix decomposition.

10. Problem-solving pattern

Brainstorming speeds problem solving by defining problems and root causes and then generating more creative solutions. Joint problem solving helps build a high-performance teams faster.

Identify problem, issue or risk to solve.
Brainstorm solution criteria
Explore root causes
Brainstorm potential solutions.
Analyze impact of best solutions
Blend best features to develop better solution.
Select best alternative

11. Impact analysis brainstorming

Impact analysis reduces conflicts due to competing alternatives.

Identify competing alternatives solutions.
Brainstorm description
Brainstorm pro's for each solution
Brainstorm con's for each solution
Select major alternatives

12. Process mapping pattern

Process mapping can be used to develop costs for current and new resource workloads to develop cost benefit comparison between previous and new processes.

Brainstorm business processes to map.
Identify work steps in each process.
Identify cycle time for each work step.
Identify resource usage for each step.
Enter process map into Microsoft Project
Create cost/benefit matrix comparing improvement between old and new process in Excel.

13. SWOT Strategic planning Pattern

SWOT analysis contains four topics to kickstart Strategic Planning.

Brainstorm Strengths.
Brainstorm Weaknesses.
Brainstorm Opportunities.
Brainstorm Threats.

14. JAD joint application design sessions

Joint application design expedites requirements definition by defining requirements and developing user interface design with group of key users.

Identify transactions that enterprise must process
Identify business processes where information would help
Map out work steps in each process.
Identify user interfaces for each process.
Identify information on for each form.

15. Cost Benefit analysis

Cost/benefit analysis creates a powerful tool for communicating benefits to project sponsors. Cost benefit analysis also focuses the project team on making sure the major benefits are achieved. It also helps them make the correct trade-off analysis when making design and deployment decisions. The current and new costs feed into Cost Benefit analysis from the Process Mapping pattern.

Create cost/benefit spreadsheet.
Identify activities impacted by the process improvement.
Count number of times activity is repeated each year.
Create a process map for before and new versions of each activity
Extract unit costs and benefits from the process models.
Calculate current cost of activities.
Project the future cost of each activity.
Calculate benefits from process improvement.

16. New product design pattern

Clever design key to product success as measured by revenue, profitability and increased market share. Product should deliver increased value at a lower cost when compared to competitive products.

Turbo brainstorming stimulates creativity during product design, increases the generation of breakthrough ideas, increases team collaboration, speeds problem solving; all essential to new product design. Turbo brainstorming expedites product projects to deliver new products in a timely fashion.

Product screening
Market assessment
Technical assessment
Detailed market study
Business analysis
Product development
Inhouse product tests
Market testing
Production setup
Market launch

17.Checkerboard brainstorming

1.	1.1	1.2	1.3	1.4	1.5	1.6	1.7
2.	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4	2.5	2.6	2.7
1.	3.1	3.2	3.3	3.4	3.5	3.6	3.7
4.	4.1	4.2	4.3	4.4	4.5	4.6	4.7
5.	5.1	5.2	5.3	5.4	5.5	5.6	5.7
6.	6.1	6.2	6.3	6.4	6.5	6.6	6.7
7.	7.1	7.2	7.3	7.4	7.5	7.6	7.7
8.	8.1	8.2	8.3	8.4	8.5	8.6	8.7

Create a personal brainstorming system using a Microsoft Word table where the cells simulate post-it notes.

Identify topic.
Create table in Microsoft Word.
Write ideas into table cells
Move ideas with mouse drag and drop
Organize ideas in rows.
Insert new rows for more ideas.
Main ideas in left hand cells.
Related sub ideas in same row.
Sort rows in priority sequence.
Split unrelated ideas in separate tables.
Merge right-hand cells in a row to produce structure table.

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email me with your questions

Speeds up many processes in Project management and completing Project Activities.

Teams that develop and refine plans to understand the big picture develop stronger commitment to plans. These sessions also build respect for other team members.

Team Planning Sessions

Team planning sessions increase commitment and reduce project schedule time.
Phase n Start		Phase n Middle		Phase n Finish

Team planning sessions identify tasks using post-it notes which are organized on sets of flipcharts. When the team planning session is completed then capture the results in Microsoft Project.

Click this link to register for any of my Project Management courses

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Click here List of Recommended books on Project Management, Team Building, Estimating, Software Development methodologies, requirements definition, and Microsoft Project.

I.S.P.

information
systems
planning corp.

5361 Malaspina Place
North Vancouver
B.C.V7R 4L9

Last updated April 18, 2007

About Brian Mullen, M.Sc., president of I.S.P. information systems planning corp.

email Brian Mullen with your questions