Facilitated Workshops
Facilitated workshops are structured meetings designed to achieve a specific objective, led by a skilled, neutral facilitator and involving a carefully selected group of stakeholders. They serve as an effective technique for various purposes within the project life cycle, such as developing a product roadmap, assembling a business case, developing a charter, and eliciting product information.
Objectives and Usage Across Different Stages
Product Roadmap Development: Facilitated workshops can be instrumental in eliciting the information required to formulate a product roadmap. The collaborative environment allows stakeholders to brainstorm, prioritize, and define the high-level features and capabilities needed for the product.
Business Case Assembly: When the objective is to elicit information necessary for compiling a business case, facilitated workshops provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss, scrutinize, and validate various business scenarios, risks, and benefits.
Charter Development: Facilitated workshops can serve as a viable means to develop a project or product charter. They enable stakeholders to come to a consensus on project objectives, scope, deliverables, and other essential elements to be included in the charter.
Requirements Elicitation: When termed as a "requirements workshop," facilitated workshops are primarily utilized for defining product information quickly across multiple domains and for reconciling stakeholder differences.
Characteristics
Interactivity and Collaboration: One of the major strengths of facilitated workshops is the interactive and collaborative nature of the discussions. This can lead to improved communication among stakeholders and can be crucial for complex topics that require multi-faceted input.
Stakeholder Consensus: Well-facilitated workshops are efficient tools for building stakeholder consensus. This is achieved by fostering relationships and building trust among the participants.
Skilled Facilitation: The effectiveness of a facilitated workshop is highly dependent on the skills of the facilitator, who needs to be experienced in guiding the group toward achieving the objective of the workshop.
Integration with Other Techniques: Facilitated workshops can incorporate other techniques like brainstorming and collaborative games to enrich the elicitation process and to achieve the objectives in a more engaging manner.
Thus, facilitated workshops are a versatile and powerful technique for various stages of business analysis, enabling stakeholders to collaborate effectively and reach a consensus on key issues. They are often used in combination with other elicitation techniques to optimize outcomes.