Challenge

I work in a team where we build digital products to support business operations in a traditional  economic sector. Our company is a infrastructure developer and had most expertise in linear project  planning using waterfall methodology. My team of 5 consists of engineers and software developers  who are more used to working in an agile and iterative manner with a decentralized decision-making  process. The specific challenge I face daily is how might we direct our product development activities  more effectively to accommodate the linear planning process at a wider division level where most of  the planning are linear and non-iterative.

Selection

I select the mind-mapping tool to address this challenge. Mind-mapping, according to week 3’s  video, is a visual technique for identifying patterns in a complex situation with an aim to arrive at  new insights around design criteria that can help drive the design thinking process from what-is to  what-if. I picked this tool for 2 reasons: 1. The mind-map can help chart all the projects and  workstreams within the division and give greater clarity to my team on how our work impacts our  colleagues’ initiatives to help identify values and overlaps; 2. The mind-map allows us to understand  underserved areas and discover opportunities and set pace for what we should develop and at what  speed and scope.

Application

What we did was that I hosted a 1-hour workshop for my team. I started the session with a high- level nodes and branches on the major initiatives, then my team would spend the next 20 minutes to  collaboratively fill-out the mind-map ( I used a free online mind-mapping tool), with a focus on the  objectives, key results of each of the project we have in the team and how they map to the major  initiatives in the division. Then in the following 20 minutes, we discuss the key observations around  overlaps and areas of neglect and prioritized our projects. In the last 20 minutes, the team added  tasks as the left-nodes on the mind-map over the areas that we collectively prioritized and reviewed  the validity of those tasks. The resultant set of tasks were then turned into self-assignments in our  workflow management system and scheduled accordingly.

Insight

Doing a collaborative mind-mapping exercise was very helpful in seeing different perspectives from  the team. Areas of focus immediately gained clarity and apparent contradictions in certain projects’  executions are highlighted. One surprise that I learned was that what the team sees as priority  would sometimes collectively deviate from what I viewed as priority from the business perspective.  The level of details on tasks also reveal a different understanding on the problems at hand, between  division leadership and the team.

Approach

I’d say the mind-mapping exercise was very helpful, although far from ideal as it was practiced. 2  things I would do differently as I run it next time: 1. A shorter exercise with a more focused objective  would help the team not to wander across too many problem and project domains. 2. Allowing  anonymous editing and collaborations would encourage the team to flag issues more freely.

