Example Reflection - Mind Mapping     Challenge  Working as an academic development officer for the rectorate of a private design  university operating with a national multi-campus strategy and an international focus  as their USP, I am in charge of the project management of a redesign of the product:  the curricula of 6 interdisciplinary Bachelor programs.     The challenge is to make the programs more profitable while at the same time  keeping up the general quality of teaching and research of the university in order to  stay competitive and meet the national assessment criteria. The student numbers  are growing and more growth is expected. However, in the last two years, with new  investments the costs have exceeded the revenues. Thus, a new structure by  reducing the current resources has to be created by the next winter term, which is  starting in about 8 months. Besides economic and quality aspects (accreditation) to  be considered, the main challenge is to integrate all stakeholders: teaching staff as  well as students evaluations, who are the end-consumers and the most important  focus group. Moreover, the curricula are supposed to be more flexible adaptable to  the different campuses in order to meet their own regional needs.       Selection  The academic program leaders in the past have already undergone steady, but  minor optimizations of the curricula. Although being mostly designers and used to  creative work environment themselves, time pressure often prevented to come up  with new innovations.   As the scrum master, I developed a plan together with the product owners defining  sprints and the delivery team while using a kanban board. As tools, I decided to stick  to use various mind-mapping tools to re-think the curricula in a free and creative way  in order to avoid sticking on the already known and be able to come up with new  ideas. Together with the product owners we decided whom to involve in the process  and how to mix the various groups. Thus, employees were mixed in three different  groups: the first one was theme related including all theory or communication design  professors, the second one was vertically mixed including different positions and  responsibilities by the teaching staff and the third group included members of the  examination office and accreditation officers.   The students were undertaken a different process with interviews regarding their  needs and wishes. Data from previous student evaluation was taken into  consideration as well.

Application  At the beginning, applying mind-mapping, we exclusively focused on the  content-side of the curricula and ignore economic boundaries or limits of resources:  with sticky notes needed skills and the teaching goals behind each program were  collected and grouped in each of the groups. In a seperate round knowledge, attitude  and expectations of the students from a staff perspective were equally grouped. In a  next step, these were compared to student interviews and insights from the  evaluation data and adjusted accordingly. All this took place throughout the course of  2 month with a weekly 1-day workshop with one of the groups.   The next step was to merge these needs together with the set economic boundaries  to create a minimum viable product. Starting with the outcomes of the delivery  teams, the team of the product owners started mind-mapping various structures  shaping the content. Two different curricula were created: both contain large  amounts of shared modules, who could are adjustable to short-term needs or  external co-operations, but start from different angles. Both curricula were  undertaken calculations in order to meet the set economic goals.     Insight  By applying the mind mapping method, the team was able to think out of the box and  identify new groupings and thus create a whole new structure. The approach was  holistic and we started to think the product through from the bottom, especially  leaving out the pressure to meet the expected economic goals at the beginning.  Including insights on the expectations of the students, by revising evaluation data of  alumni and current students, was very valuable.       Approach  Generally speaking, the mind mapping tool was the right one for the development of  a new curriculum structure and the highly motivated team was happy to have a clear  goal to work to towards. However, some workshop days had to be postponed due to  the daily obligations of the team members. Also, the long period, was quite arduous  to some of the team members. In the future, I would make a more dense workshop  week to finish faster with the overall project.

