Business Analysis Technique – Brainstorming

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Business Analysis Technique – Brainstorming

 
The whiteboard.  The dry eraser.  The multi-color pens.  The overbearing meeting participant.  Those four things often come together when thinking of brainstorming.  It’s a technique among multiple management nexus disciplines and at the heart of agile, business analysis and project management. It can produce great results from a team.
The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (2nd Edition) addresses it in section 9.3. The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge references brainstorming as the tool and technique, Facilitated Workshops, for Collect Requirements (5.1) and Define Scope (5.2).

 
Brainstorming is also technique, despite years of coaching and training to improve its effectiveness, that can go easily astray.
An innocent enough brainstorming session can quickly turn into a diatribe from a “power figure” or as easily slip into a real life parody of the television show “The Office“.

 
When effectively facilitated brainstorming sessions can unleash a wealth of ideas, strategies and enthusiasm for a team.  One approach that helps keep the brainstorming in the positive side is nominal group technique (NGT).  And one little tool that makes NGT work is the ubiquitous post-it note (aka sticky note).   Here are some steps for NGT – we’ll use deciding features for a new Twitter interface as an example:

 

  • Gather group together – preferably less than 12
  • Distribute 10 post-it notesKeep a supply of extra post-its handy
  • Have participants write their ideas for the new Twitter interface, silently, on their post-it.  One idea per post-it
  • (people often forget the 1 per post-it rule, so gently remind them
  • When everyone has a chance to capture their ideas, call for confirmation that “we’re done”
  • Have each team member read 1 idea at a time and go around the table or room
  • Clarification questions are OK, judgment questions are not
  • Continue going around the room until all post-its have been shared – one at a time
  • When all post-its have been shared, ask “what’s missing”?
  • Gather up the post-its and have the group arrange by topic or association – for example #trending topics, social network plugs, etc.  This leads wonderfully into another technique called affinity diagramming.

 

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Disclaimer: The article/post is posted with the purpose of sharing knowledge and information. The article may contain references or content from other informative sources.

Researched/Authored/Compiled by Ronak Shah [Practice Head- Software Testing (QA), CIGNEX Datamatics]    

About the author– Ronak Shah is the well-known Software Quality Strategist, QA Architect and the man behind delivering hundreds of “quality” software solutions worldwide to the enterprises including Fortune Global 500 companies. He is proficient in setting up, developing and managing independent Software Testing (QA) practice/department from the scratch in the organizations with his strong capabilities around team building, competence building and CMMi processes design and implementation. His leadership and management skills have won him many prestigious awards, recognitions and accolades from various organizations and esteemed clients for his outstanding performance, value-added contributions and his expert knowledge in “all types of software testing”. Ronak Shah (National Level Software Testing Topper Rank-1 as per TechGig.com, Geek Challenge Winner on ZDNet.com) can be reached at ronak.quality@yahoo.com.

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