Product Discovery Ideation Session
As part of Product Discovery, cross-functional product teams should be given the autonomy and freedom to explore the solution space on their own.
As part of Product Discovery, cross-functional product teams should be given the autonomy and freedom to explore the solution space on their own. Their complementary skills and perspectives lead to objectively better and more creative ideas than top-level management can come up with. But in order to harness this creativity, it takes structure. That's why I created this step-by-step ideation session template for teams to use during Product Discovery. I've incorporated proven ideas from my own experience and from others, while providing enough flexibility to make it your own.
For the "context" stage, I recommend frameworks like Impact Mapping, which can quickly bring participants up to speed in terms of recently gathered user insights. Throughout the ideation process, I encourage a "together alone" working mode, giving individuals the freedom to sort their thoughts without the bias and pressure of group thinking.
The session should end with a prioritization of the identified ideas. Here it's important to keep an iterative and experimental mindset for the following steps of your Product Discovery: Think how easy it would be to launch an experiment around this idea and how high your confidence is at the moment in terms of creating the changes in behavior you have prioritized.
This template was created by Tim Herbig.
Get started with this template right now.
Agile Transition Plan Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Agile Workflows
An Agile transformation roadmap can help you, your team, and your organization transition from rigid compliance-heavy methods to the more flexible Agile way of doing things incrementally. From requirements to integrations to security, you can map out your organization's moving parts as “swim lanes” that you can then update regularly. Use your roadmap as a way to tell the story of how you see your product growing over a period of time. Get buy-in without overselling and keep your roadmap simple, viable and measurable. By using an Agile transformation roadmap, you can avoid getting bogged down in details and instead invest in big-picture strategic thinking.
Retrospective - Christmas Edition
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Retrospectives, Meetings
The Retrospective Christmas Edition template offers a festive and themed approach to retrospectives, perfect for the holiday season. It provides elements for reflecting on the year's achievements, sharing gratitude, and setting intentions for the upcoming year. This template enables teams to celebrate successes, foster camaraderie, and align on goals amidst the holiday spirit. By promoting a joyful and reflective atmosphere, the Retrospective - Christmas Edition empowers teams to strengthen relationships, recharge spirits, and start the new year with renewed energy and focus effectively.
PI Planning Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning, Software Development
PI planning stands for “program increment planning.” Part of a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), PI Planning helps teams strategize toward a shared vision. In a typical PI planning session, teams get together to review a program backlog, align cross-functionally, and decide on the next steps. Many teams carry out a PI planning event every 8 to 12 weeks, but you can customize your planning schedule to fit your needs. Use PI planning to break down features, identify risks, find dependencies, and decide which stories you’re going to develop.
SAFe Roam Board
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Operations, Agile Workflows
A SAFe ROAM Board is a framework for making risks visible. It gives you and your team a shared space to notice and highlight risks, so they don’t get ignored. The ROAM Board helps everyone consider the likelihood and impact of risks, and decide which risks are low priority versus high priority. The underlying principles of SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) are: drive cost-effective solutions, apply systems thinking, assume that things will change, build incrementally, base milestones on evaluating working systems, and visualize and limit works in progress.
The Team Canvas
Works best for:
Agile
The Team Canvas is a versatile tool for aligning on goals, roles, and processes. It provides a structured framework for defining purpose, clarifying responsibilities, and visualizing the working environment. By fostering open communication and shared understanding, this template facilitates collaboration and increases team cohesion, empowering you to create a shared vision and drive collective success.
Mad Sad Glad Retrospective
Works best for:
Brainstorming, Ideation
It's tempting to measure a sprint’s success solely by whether goals and timelines were met. But there’s another important success metric: emotions. And Mad Sad Glad is a popular, effective technique for teams to explore and share their emotions after a sprint. That allows you to highlight the positive, underline the concerns, and decide how to move forward as a team. This template makes it easy to conduct a Mad Sad Glad that helps you build trust, improve team morale, and increase engagement.