Parking Lot Matrix Template
Keep team meetings focused by managing ideas, distractions, and side discussions.
About the Ideas Parking Lot Matrix Template
The Ideas Parking Lot Matrix (also known as the “wall of ideas”) can help your team capture ideas and issues that need more research or discussion during meetings.
Big ideas, progress blockers, or unrelated tangents may not resolve themselves by the end of a meeting. Try to see if your team might agree to use a parking lot framework during a workshop or meeting. The democratic approach can let everyone take ownership of the material they’ve contributed during the discussion.
Each team member can point out any concerns they might have. After the main discussion ends, they can agree to take action on what can be prioritized and report back on improvements made since your last meeting.
Keep reading to learn more about [ideas parking lot matrixes].
What is an Ideas Parking Lot Matrix
A Parking Lot Matrix is a facilitation tool used during workshops or longer meetings to isolate distractions, or unrelated topics and decide what ideas and worth turning into actionable next steps. Putting your ideas into a Parking Lot Matrix allows you to focus on the immediate team discussion and still recognize everyone’s thoughts and contributions to the meeting.
Parking lot matrices work especially well when you have teammates in the group who are likely to go off-topic or suggest ideas that may be vague and open to scope creep. Their ideas and observations are ‘parked’ for when the right time and context is clear, building a bank of valuable insights to prioritize or return to as needed.
Create your own Ideas Parking Lot Matrix
Making your own Ideas Parking Lot Matrix is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share them. Get started by selecting the Ideas Parking Lot Matrix Template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Stay on-topic during the meeting.
Pick a topic and stick to it. If anyone in the group jumps to another topic or jumps to unrelated ideas, encourage them to use sticky notes to document their thoughts in writing. Recording their thoughts acknowledges that the idea has value, but is perhaps not as urgent as the current topic you need to address.
Collect clusters of questions, unrelated tangents, or unproven ideas to follow-up on.
Your team can use (or ‘Command+D’ on your keyboard) to rapidly and concisely ideate on as many sticky notes as needed. ‘Ideas under Discussion’ will focus on the most important concepts or concerns. Everyone should feel free to add ideas under opportunities, things to keep on the radar, things to consider later, and things that shouldn’t be considered.
Clarify your team’s action items to follow-up on.
Turn relevant sticky notes into action items owned by a team member with a realistic timeline to report back on progress. This helps keep the meeting on-schedule by focusing on future to-dos rather than solving or wrapping up every idea at once.
Make plans to set-up a follow-up meeting.
A parking lot matrix is an action plan for future research, discussions, or meetings. Ideally, the framework should outline ways that your team can turn a hypothetical contribution into tangible value. Try incorporating alongside your Matrix to keep everyone organized and on-track for your next team regroup.
Get started with this template right now. It’s free
Meeting Notes
When your meeting is a success (and Miro will help make sure it is), participation will run high, brilliant ideas will be had, and decisions will be made. Make sure you don’t miss a single one — use our meeting notes template to track notes and feedback in a centralized place that the whole team can access. Just assign a notetaker before the meeting, identify the discussion topics, and let the notetaker take down the participants, important points covered, and any decisions made.
Team Charter
A team charter is a document that outlines your team’s purpose and objectives, as well as steps you will take to reach your goals. The team charter illustrates the focus and direction for all team members. When created collaboratively, the team charter is a great way for individuals to feel even more connected to one another within the group. A team charter template is useful when you’re first establishing a new team, adding new members to an existing team, or when you need to better align regardless of your team’s tenure.
Daily Standup
The entire team meets to review the day before and discuss the day ahead. These daily meetings, also known as “scrums,” are brief but powerful — they identify roadblocks, give each team member a voice, foster collaboration, keep progress on track, and ultimately keep teams working together effectively. This template makes it so easy for you to plan daily standups for your sprint team. It all starts with picking a date and time, creating an agenda, and sticking with the same format throughout the sprint.
How Now Wow Matrix
There are no bad ideas in a brainstorm — but some are more original and easier to implement. The How Now Wow matrix is a tool that helps you identify and organize those great ideas, as well as reinvigorates your team to think creatively and take risks (a taller order as you scale). Grab this template to create your own matrix, then rank the ideas you generated in a brainstorm as “How” (difficult to implement), “Now” (easy to implement), or “Wow” (both original and easy to implement).
Dot Voting
Dot voting, also known as “sticker voting,” “dotmocracy,” or “voting with dots”, allows teams to point out issues in a series of potential solutions or to prioritize tasks when presented with various options. Dot voting is different from the default “one-share” or “one-vote” rule. Instead, each person in the group is given as many votes (or “points”) as can be filled. Those votes can either all be cast for one idea, or distributed among many ideas. You can use dot voting any time your team prioritizes options or agrees on a direction to take for a high-stakes project.
Prune the Product Tree
Prune the Product Tree (also known as the product tree game or the product tree prioritization framework) is a visual tool that helps product managers organize and prioritize product feature requests. The tree represents a product roadmap and helps your team think about how to grow and shape your product or service by gamifying feedback-gathering from customers and stakeholders. A typical product tree has four symbolic features: the trunk, which represents the existing product features your team is building; the branches, each of which represents a product or system function; roots, which are technical requirements or infrastructure; and leaves, which are new ideas for product features.