Abstract: Once upon a time, we had ‘Discovery’, ‘Define’, and ‘Design’. These phases let us explore the problem and the audience, while conceiving a holistic solution. Now we have sprints, complete with a backlog that seems like it appears overnight and a development team that is going to build with or without design to guide it. How do we continue to create great products?
Introducing the Fast Foundation Workshop. This 3-day workshop enables you to engage your clients and stakeholders to quickly define the key elements of your product or project, aligns the team, and identifies critical risks. When it is complete, everyone has a good idea of what is going to be built as well as what it will take to get there. It has been tested with companies of all sizes, from founders looking to conceptualize their first product, to large companies redesigning existing products, as well as across verticals. Its general enough to be used in a wide variety of circumstances while specific enough to ensure that you get specific, usable results.
The Fast Foundation Workshop consists of 4 exercises, each one designed to pivot the team’s perspective on the product, while drilling down to greater levels of detail. Each stage of the Fast Foundation Workshop balances democratic content generation with collaborative consensus. You may be familiar with some of the individual exercises, but the magic is in how each is conducted and in how they fit together. The workshop starts with establishing clear goals & priorities, then moves to defining possible users of the product. Next, we shift to a task perspective, mapping the activities those user will need to accomplish to meet the goals, before visualizing key areas of the solution. When these four areas are clear, everyone involved will have a shared understanding of the vision as well as have a clear way to identify risks and mitigate them.
This workshop will introduce leaders of any kind, from product owners and scrum masters, to UX and development leads, to each of the exercises, allow you to experience a piece of it, show how they fit together, and give you some tips on how to facilitate them with your team. You will be prepared to run a Fast Foundation workshop with your own team, if you already have experience with some of the exercises, or know where you need to do additional prep, if the exercises are new to you.
Learning Outcomes: - - How 'define' activities have evolved
- - Philosophy behind the workshop structure
- - Overview of each technique
- - Tips on how to facilitate the exercise
- - What to do after it is over
