I.S.P.  

1. Understand client objectives
2. Brainstorm risks that threaten project success.
3. Open channels of communication
4. Deliver better results by considering more alternatives.
5. Stimulate creative thinking and generate more alternatives.
6. Share ideas openly to deliver better better solutions.
7. Build high-performance teams through communication and overcoming major challenges.
8. Speed team meetings by sixty percent and get better results.
9. Reduce conflict through better understanding of others' ideas.
10. Reduce resistance to change by involving more people in key decisions.

1. Build high-performance teams to fast track projects
2. Improve communication
3. Reduce meeting time
4. Reduce number of meetings
5. Stimulate thinking (# ideas)
6. Improve quality of results from meetings
7. More action items
8. Improve quality of downstream activities
9. Gain input from multiple resources
10. Improve quality of agenda planning
11. Improve problem solving
12. Improve quality of planning
13. Reduce backend-review time
14. Implement suggestions quickly
15. Reduce interpersonal conflicts
16. Speed decision making
17. Assemble information for activities
18. Reduce report preparation

1. Alberta Natural Gas
2. BC Tel
3. Computing Devices Canada
4. Canada Safeway
5. CIPS Canadian Information Processing Society
6. Digital Equipment Corporation
7. ICBC
8. North Shore Health
9. PMI Project Management Institute Vancouver chapter
10. Telus

1. Reduce meeting by 60 %.
2. Improves quality of results
3. Compress three meetings into one
4. Use Team-planning sessions to brainstorm plans, build commitment

Use different for different topic types We have identified over twenty topic formats.

For a detailed agendas for any individual session click on the session title shown in the box below.

1. New product design process
2. Idea processing sequence
3. Turbo brainstorming process
4. Brainstorming next topic
5. Planning meeting agendas
   
6. Debono's six thinking hats
7. Project planning process
8. Objective Setting process
9. Project Scoping process
10. Deliverables definition process
11. Problem solving process
12. Skill assessment
13. Impact Analysis process
14. Process mapping process
15. SWOT pattern
16. JAD joint application design pattern
17. Cost benefit Analysis process
18. Checker board brainstorming with Word

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

• Client objectives definition and enhancement
• 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

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.

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.

Each brainstorming topic takes between thirty and sixty minutes.

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

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

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

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

1. Understand client objectives.
2. Explore budget, schedule, technical and operational constraints.
3. Identify risks that threaten project success.
4. Identify deliverables to meet client objectives.
5. Select process to produce each deliverable.
6. Develop strategy to complete project successful.
7. Identify resources required to deliver results.
8. Identify tasks to produce each deliverable.
9. Estimate effort and duration to for each work package.
10. Assign resources to tasks.
11. Develop project schedule and budget.
12. Level resource workloads.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

• 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.