Liberating Structure to build Roadmap
After productive weeks burning backlog 💅, the quarter is about to end (not necessarily), so it’s time to get down to work and define what is next.
Think about the following meeting, at the table are seated the executive team, designers, product managers, and maybe some technical leads. There is no doubt, their vision, their ideas, and their expertise are fundamental for an excellent Roadmap definition. But wait! 🤔 do you miss someone? Where are the rest of the minds with brilliant ideas, and different points of view? Where are the developers who deal with code or the operational team who take care of our users?
Suppose you really want our people to feel aligned with the goals or you want to have real innovation giving voice to all. In that case, it is almost mandatory to involve explicitly developers, agents, and in general, all the points of view… and you need to do it by giving voice to all of them, you need to make it liberating structures.
Liberating Structure aka LS
Before going deeper, we should take a look at what the Liberating Structure is.
LS is a tool to help with group dynamics where inclusion, engagement, team collaboration, and strengthening of results are maximum.
Try to provide a definition, it is not a simple task. As Keith McCandless (creator of the concept together with Henri Lipmanowicz) says “LS is so many things at the same time”.
Somehow, the answer and significance are based on you and your experiences, but if we would have to give our own definition, we would say that LS is a tool to help with group dynamics where inclusion, engagement, team collaboration, and strengthening of results are maximum.
You can find the bible at liberatingstructure.com. We highly recommend you take a look if you want to delve into it, specifically we would recommend reading LS Menu, understanding some of the activities, and finding the opportunity to apply it in your day-to-day work. we guarantee that by following the dynamics properly, the results will be surprising. As a recommendation, a good getting started would be TRIZ for your retrospectives or 1–2–4–All for brainstorming.
As good getting started would be TRIZ for your retrospectives or 1–2–4–All for brainstromings.
In our specific case, we are going to talk about 1–2–4–All and how it has helped us to define our RoadMap (not exclusively). we would like to share with you our experience in order to help you understand how it could be used if you see the opportunity.
Before carrying out the dynamic
Since we discovered the liberating structures (thanks to Daniel for that), we have not stopped having them in mind, not as the Sancta Sanctorum, but after having understood a couple of dynamics, we have seen clear opportunities for use. RoadMap definition session seemed to be a good scenario for us where the main goal is to generate ideas as much as possible considering all opinions. we guess it fits like a glove.
If we want to maximize the result, it is essential to encourage participation and inclusion.
If no rules are put in place, these sessions are usually led by roles such as user researchers and product managers who may have acquired the most prior knowledge. This kind of session is a predefined meeting structure we need to break. If we want to maximize the result, it is essential to encourage participation and inclusion.
1–2–4–All
Participants
Mix roles as many as you can, diversity is the key here: developers, data analysts, agents, managers, designers, your neighbor from the fifth … you can even consider inviting real users, although remember that it is not going to be the only input we are going to use for our RoadMap. User research, user data behavior, etc. are going to be considered too, so maybe for real users, this is the best channel of communication.
Tooling required
A remote environment is not an excuse anymore. Metroretro to share ideas and breakout rooms from zoom or hangouts are more than enough to follow a 1–2–4–All session
Methodology
It is very gratifying to see how people come from breaking rooms breathless trying to generate a lot of ideas in a few seconds, but always returning with a smile on their faces
It is described perfectly in liberatingstructures.com. Try to be strict as much as possible, all the considerations in the methodology have a proposal, like avoiding discussion during the first rounds using a time limit. It is very gratifying to see how people come from breaking rooms breathless trying to generate a lot of ideas in a few seconds, but always returning with a smile on their faces
Some keys
From our experience, here are some keys we consider important for the success of the initiative:
- Be ready for the session. If you have a high number of participants, it is important to have everything prepared. I would recommend you to make a rehearsal if you have time.
- Something that can help to generate ideas is to share with the participant data or information (customer journey maps, user feedback, UX research) that could be useful for them. In a team with a good data-driven culture, it may not be necessary, but it is always good to have a focus on reality.
- Related to the previous point, avoid bias as much as possible. It is not the same to share the problems reported by certain users as to share the concerns together with some solutions.
- Follow the dynamics methodology: respect time, and read the Tips and Traps section to avoid mistakes.
Conclusions
Done! The RoadMap is ready, with the outcomes from the session and a bit of grooming, we are ready to code. Ha! do not count on it. I already did a disclaimer, the LS can help us define our RoadMap, but not exclusively.
Although it is true that we have a guide, we need to analyze the outcomes, prioritize them, and take the data into account. Then, we are ready for experiments and to prove our ideas. This culture could close the product development loop: problem — experimentation — analysis — solution.
The liberating structure is fun and revealing dynamics, they take us out of the classic meeting or the day-to-day routine. They allow us to give a voice to even the most introverted of colleagues and to get ideas that had not even crossed our minds. The tradeoffs are 0%. Cheer up with your first LS, everyone will thank you.
