Collaborative Techniques, can unlock innovation and creativity. This training explains how collaborative techniques can used to design and plan innovative new products.

1. Collaborative Techniques
Andrew Rusling
Agile Coach

2. Contents
1. Collaborative Techniques
2. Game Plan
3. Problem Solving
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3. Collaborative Techniques
3

4. Games
Collaborative Technique = Game
Why use games
• Games are a great way to learn
• Games help us step out of mental boundaries
• Games allow us to collaborate in safety
• Games can be very short, or long and elaborate.
• Small games combine well to create other games.
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5. Three broad types 5
Idea Decision
Opening
Divergent
Generating more ideas
Exploring
Emergent
Categorising, Understanding
Closing
Divergent
Deciding, Choosing

6. Game Plan
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7. The situation
• I have won the lotto!
• You are awesome game designers
• Who I hired for my new game company
• We have enough money to hire anybody we need
• We are going to design an online computer game
• We are going to plan it’s delivery
• This will be done using a series of ‘games’.
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Photo credit: http://taxrebate.org.uk/

8. Ideation of game ideas
Whiteboard brainstorming
Pros
• Easy to build upon ideas
• Facilitator clarifies ideas
Cons
• Facilitator is a bottleneck
• Hard to rearrange items
• Limited by white space
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9. Choose game idea
Dot Voting
1. Facilitator decides on how many dots each
player gets.
2. Players take turns marking the available
items with their dots.
3. Players may allocate all of their dots to
one item, or spread them out.
4. The items can then be ordered by the total
number of dot votes received.
5. Ties can be decided with one extra vote
per participant just on the tie breaker
items.
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10. Dot Voting
Good to choose couple of items to work on
Considerations
• How many dots? Usually 3 or 5
• Influence vs. Power?
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11. User Story Mapping
It is composed of the following games:
1. Silent index card writing
2. Sharing and elaborating
3. Affinity mapping
4. Above the line prioritisation
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12. Ideation of game features
Aim: Generate ideas for game features
Silent index card writing
• Why in silence?
• Speed
• Remove influence
• Why on index cards? Why not post-it notes?
• Slide easily
• More tangible
• Correct size for User Stories
• Double sided, for extra notes
• Easy to transport
• Why write in large font?
• Easy to read, hence promotes understanding and elaboration
• Easy to type up later
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13. Share and elaborate on features
Aim: Build understanding and improve ideas
Pros
• Promotes shared understanding
• Promotes building upon ideas (which is missed in Silent writing)
• Identifies duplicate and similar items
Cons
• Much slower than everyone just placing their own items
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14. Categorisation of features
Aim: Better understand our features and prepare for Release Planning
Affinity Mapping Instructions
1. Write ideas on cards
2. Remove duplicates
3. Cluster similar items
4. Place similar clusters close to each other
5. Label the clusters, and clusters of clusters
6. Confirm cluster contents match the label, splitting clusters as
necessary
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15. Affinity Mapping (Steps 1..4) 15
Dupli
cates
Dupli
cates
Dupli
catAes
Dupli
cates
Dupli
catBes
Dupli
cates
Dupli
cat2es
ab
e
aa
aaa
3
4
41
43
• Stacked cards are duplicates (i.e. in the A, B & 2 piles)
• A and B are very similar
• E is more like A and B than 3, 2 or 4
• 2, 3 & 4 are very similar
• 2, 3 & 4 are not similar to A and B
• aa and aaa are variants of A (aka similar)
• ab is a variant of A and B
• 41 & 43 are variants of 4

16. Affinity Mapping (Steps 5..6) 16
Dupli
cates
Dupli
cates
Dupli
catAes
Metrics
Dupli
cates
Dupli
catBes
Tools
Dupli
cates
Dupli
cat2es
e
aa
3
4
41
43
Engagement
Events
ab
Build
Code
Deploy
Community
aaa
• aaa & ab moved into events

17. Release Planning
Aim: Split features into three releases.
Above the line prioritisation instructions
1. Write all items on index cards
2. Place them on the bottom of long table edge
3. Mark out a line half way up the table.
4. Ask participants to move half of the items above the line.
5. Repeat with the top half.
6. You now have top priority ¼, next priority ¼ and low priority ½ .
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18. Above the line prioritisation 18
Steps
1..3
Step
4
Step
4
again
Step
3
again

19. Above the line prioritisation
Pros
• Quick
• Allows for relative prioritisation
• Prevent everything is top priority
Cons
• Does not producing ordering.
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20. Describe our game
Aim: Create tag line & list of key differentiators.
Fist of Five instructions
1. On count of three all participants hold up their fingers in response to
the sample statement.
• Five – total agreement, awesome idea.
• Four – agree, could be improved but still good
• Three – go with majority, will accept if the majority gives 4/5
• Two – disagree, needs correction/changes
• One – veto, it is completely wrong
2. Discuss Ones, then Twos.
3. Potentially make changes to statement
4. Potentially revote or throw out the statement.
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21. Fist of Five
Pros
• Builds consensus, gradually
• Discovers reasons for lack of consensus, allowing for them to be
addressed
Cons
• Confronting for some people, when describing their reasons.
• Needs a statement to vote on
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22. Problem Solving
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23. Five Whys 23
Problem
Cause
Why?
Cause
Why?
Cause
Why?
Cause
Why?
Root Cause
Why?

24. Causal Loop Diagrams
• Wikipedia
• Explained by Henrik Kniberg
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Number of
chickens
Number of
road
crossings
Number of
eggs
+
+
+
-

25. Fishbone Diagrams 25
Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vuhung/

26. Wrap up
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27. Summary 27
1. Collaborative Techniques
1. Games
2. Opening, Exploring, Closing
2. Game Plan
1. Ideation of game ideas (Whiteboard brainstorming)
2. Choose game idea (Dot Voting)
3. Ideation of game features (Silent Note writing)
4. Sharing and elaborating of features
5. Categorise features (Affinity Mapping)
6. Release Planning (Above the line prioritisation)
7. Describe our game (Fist of Five)
3. Problem Solving
1. Five Whys
2. Causal Loop Diagrams
3. Fishbone Diagrams

28. 28
https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlos_maya/
1 - 3
Key Learning Points
One person at a time
Your answers don’t
have to be unique

29. Reference Material
Tasty Cup Cakes – stupid name, good free games
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