Virtual Workshop Methodology: Bridging the Distance in Remote Collaboration Introduction
A Case Study by Woodside Global Partners
People scattered around the globe join forces in a virtual workshop to generate a project plan. How do you give everyone a feeling of immediate, live participation? How do you keep them engaged? The answer-structure the workshop around two principles:
Visualization of ideas: Elements of the project plan are captured on sticky notes and displayed on a flipchart
Simultaneous participation: All participants generate ideas in actual time, as they would in an actual conference room
Rich experience: Irrespective of physical location, everyone is active both through audio and visually
The two principles come in to play in a virtual workshop leveraging project management best practices, web conferencing with Cisco WebEx, and an innovative application application. As the participants generate ideas for the project plan, they type them in to an application shared on their computer screens and print them locally on sticky (3M Post-it) notes. The notes are then pasted on flipcharts, visible to the whole group-both locally and remotely. The project plan takes shape as the group discusses the ideas printed on the notes and moves them around on the flipcharts. The final sequences of notes are scanned in to Microsoft Excel or Project, where they are fine-tuned in to a coherent project plan. At the conclusion of the workshop, the plan is distributed electronically to all.
The setting
Preliminary considerations
Traditional methods
This case study describes a workshop conducted in early 2011 at a division of a major manufacturer of communications and information know-how equipment. The purpose of the workshop is to secure broad acceptance of a project plan among a group of thirty project stakeholders dispersed over several locations. The project involves a reorganization of the compensation structure for workers. In order to maximize the active engagement of the stakeholders in developing the plan, the workshop organizers strive to generate an atmosphere of face-to-face interaction irrespective of whether the stakeholders are local or remote.
Process 1 (local team). The team gathers in a conference room. As the participants come up with ideas, they write them on sticky notes such as Post-its. The notes are pasted on a wall or a flipchart and moved around. Two times all the ideas have been submitted and ordered in to a plan, one of the participants types up the notes in the correct order from the flipchart in to Microsoft Word, Excel, or Project. After the typing is completed, the electronic file is distributed to the other team members.
Brainstorming teams can pick of two popular methods.
Sticky notes are a simple and effective visual device to facilitate the discussion at workshops. However, the final typing is simpler said than completed. Typing up a few hundred Post-it notes is a strain on the typist's wrists and eyes. Trying to decipher scribbled notes is as tiny fun as putting them back in order in case some fall off the flipchart. No wonder it usually takes some time before the whole team can see the results of their collective labor arrive in their electronic inbox.
Another drawback of brainstorming with Post-its is that the procedure can be employed only at one physical location. Team members who dial in to the session by phone cannot see the notes. This limits their ability to participate in the discussion. This is why teams that collaborate remotely usually resorts to Process 2.
Process 2 (remote team). Team members join a web conferencing session, for example through WebEx. As they speak out their ideas, a delegated person enters them in to Word, Excel or Project. The file is shared, so all can watch the entries accrue. But watching is a passive activity. While waiting for their turn to speak or for the ideas to get typed up, some participants disengage to check their e-mail, get the latest stock quotes, or daydream. With the typist inevitably failing to keep up with the flow of ideas in actual time, the meeting progresses slowly and the creative enthusiasm is dampened. This is a far sob from the intuitive Post-it process, where no one needs to wait for their turn to paste or move a note on a flipchart.
The best of two worlds
Fortunately, the predicament is resolved through a software-based solution that puts the convenience of Post-it notes in the hands of all the participants, no matter where they can be found. The solution is brought by NxtNote, an application for remote collaboration with a capacity to virtualize the physical surroundings of a local team meeting. With NxtNote, the participants type their ideas-e.g., for project deliverables-into the application. With a click of a button, each idea is then printed on a Post-it note, which is pasted on one of the flipcharts set up in the conference rooms at which the workshop is taking place. This process resembles the way hand-written notes would be handled-with one important distinction. With NxtNote, the notes are typed. This makes them simpler not only to read, but also to manipulate. A replica of each note is retained electronically after it is printed.
The limitations of both methods are a factor for the project planning workshop. The participants are dispersed over several locations. A team of fourteen assembles in a immense conference room in San Jose, Los angeles. Ten others collect in a smaller room in Raleigh, North Carolina. The remaining three are joining from several other places. With so plenty of remote participants, the Post-it brainstorming process does not appear to be viable. Yet a discussion based entirely on WebEx won't actively engage the team as necessary. Unless a way can be found to emulate Post-it notes over the phone or Web, there appears to be no effective way to conduct the workshop, short of flying all the participants in-understandably, not a viable option.
The distributed workshop
The electronic copy can be formed to look like a paper Post-it. But unlike the paper note, an electronic one can be moved in to applications such as Microsoft Excel or Project and shared remotely over the Web. In effect, NxtNote creates a virtual flipchart on which notes can be manipulated (moved or modified) with a mouse and keyboard on a screen visible to all workshop participants. The virtual flipchart may be edited to reflect the physical one, or it may be the principal flipchart used in the workshop. Either way, NxtNote overcomes the drawbacks of geographical dispersion in that it allows all workshop participants, local or remote, to take the same advantage of an effective brainstorming device.
The workshop is divided in to two sessions. In each, NxtNote is used together with teleconferencing device WebEx.
Groundwork session
While everyone is watching on their screens, a designated person enters the information generated in the work of the discussion in to the spreadsheet. After the groundwork session is over, the person makes use of the information to generate appropriate settings in NxtNote, so that the application is prepared for the next session-developing a detailed project plan.
In the work of the groundwork session, participants convene in WebEx to lay down the project fundamentals. Since NxtNote is an outgrowth of a project management methodology, it offers best-practice tools for this phase of a project as well. Using the tables provided in Excel spreadsheet, the participants discuss the flexibility matrix, lay down the scope in / scope out definitions, and define the project elements: deliverables, tasks, and milestones.
Two times the WebEx connection is jogging and all thirty participants have dialed in, they are divided in to two teams, each working on a part ("track") of the project plan in a breakout session. The first team is physically gathered in San Jose, with a cluster of participants joining remotely. The work on the second track is assigned to the team in Raleigh with another remote cluster. Paper flipcharts and Post-it printers are set up both in San Jose and Raleigh. Sheets of printer paper with Post-it notes color-coded for deliverables (purple), tasks (green), and milestones (yellow) are provided at the two locations.
Project planning sessions
Each team discusses the work to be completed on their portion of the project. Individual members generate notes with deliverables, tasks, and milestones by entering them in to NxtNote, print them to a local Post-it printer, and paste them onto the flipchart. Besides the text of a note, its author specifies the finish date and the period of the item, its owner, and its type: deliverable, task, or milestone. �
Modification and removal of duplicate or incorrect Post-its are also managed through NxtNote. Since multiple team members can add, alter, or delete items in NxtNote simultaneously, there is no need to wait for one's turn in order to make use of the application and print out a Post-it.
As pasted Post-its are reviewed by the team, they are moved around in to the desired configuration. Finally, they are arranged in to a project schedule.
Remote participants in breakout sessions participate in the discussion by dialing in. They enter notes remotely in to NxtNote and send them for printing on Post-it notes to the San Jose or Raleigh printer. Since the remote participants are not present in front of a flipchart, they cannot touch, paste, or move the scraps of paper. But they can participate and co-direct the action on the flipchart as they watch it through a camera transmitting images from the conference room through WebEx. A standard web cam built in to a PC may not have the imaging power to make the details on the flipchart sufficiently visible. To overcome this limitation, higher-resolution digital cameras are used.
At the finish of the breakout sessions, each team leader-one in San Jose and the other in Raleigh-scans the Post-it notes from the paper flipchart. A special NxtNote scanner is used for this task. What is the purpose of scanning? When notes are typed in to NxtNote in order to be printed on Post-its, they are stored consecutively in the NxtNote history file, in the order of their entry. But in the work of the breakout sessions, the Post-its with the notes have been rearranged on the flipcharts according to dependencies, timing, and other relational information. In order to reproduce the final configuration of the notes electronically, the position of the entries in NxtNote history could be by hand adjusted so that it corresponds to their order on the paper flipchart. But the manual approach is tedious and error-prone. NxtNote eliminates it through scanning. While a hand-held NxtNote scanner is passed along the rows or columns of Post-its, the notes-already stored in NxtNote history-are automatically entered in to an industry-standard application application in the order of scanning. If the notes are scanned systematically, their sequencing on the flipchart will be replicated in the application in the exact manner. Plenty of types of applications can be used to hold the sequences of scanned notes-for example, Microsoft Word, Excel, Project, or Visio.
Each note in NxtNote carries a one-of-a-kind identifier, generated automatically when the note is created. When the note is printed on a Post-it, the identifier is coded in to the bar code appearing in the upper part.
In the project planning workshop, the recommended application selected for scanning the notes is Microsoft Project. The leaders of each track of the project take turn scanning Post-it notes from their respective breakout sessions in to a single instance of Project. This process is managed by passing control from one leader to another. After a tiny bit of manual rearrangement at the finish, the project plan in Project is prepared to be viewed by all the workshop participants as they return to the main session after the breakouts. �
In the Gantt chart view of Project, the scanned notes appear as rows of text to the left. In the chart to the right, they are represented as horizontal bars. The color of the bars corresponds to the color of the Post-it notes: purple for deliverables, green for tasks, and yellow for milestones. Watching the chart on the screen shared in WebEx by the workshop coordinator (in our case, one of the team leaders), the workshop participants conclude the project plan as they specify dependencies, firm up the dates, and readjust the period of the task bars. The process would be similar had the teams choose to make use of Excel in lieu of Project.
Two times the workshop is wrapped up, the final project plan is sent to all the participants.
Final thoughts
There was no retyping, no missed items, and no misinterpretation of what has been discussed. A final thought... Although the workshop described in this study involved a physically scattered group, the efficiencies of NxtNote may even be realized within a local team. NxtNote puts structured project management processes at the team's disposal, no matter where its members can be found. And wherever they are, automatic printing and scanning of Post-its will always beat writing them by hand and typing them up.
chongfuDespite the geographical dispersion of the team, the workshop has worked like a dream. Its success proved the validity of our assumptions. First, the group discussion was indeed facilitated by the visualization of ideas through Post-it notes. Second, by being able to generate the notes simultaneously as any other team member, everyone participated in the brainstorming phase of the discussion fully and in actual time. By transposing an effective local device in to cyberspace, the use of NxtNote made it feasible to extend the Post-it process to remote participants. Simultaneously, it allowed to overcome the limitation of web conferencing, in which the control of the screen is delegated to a single person while all the others are watching passively. Finally, the use of a scanner reduced the manual overhead of retyping and rearranging information. Thanks to the functionality of NxtNote and the structured process it helped establish, a complex program plan was created in a few hours with all the participants actively engaged. The plan was prepared for distribution minutes after the conclusion of the workshop.
Copyright Woodside Global Partners, 2011. NxtNote is a trademark of NxtNote, Inc.
For more information, visit Woodside Global Partners at
http://beyondpredictable.com/NxtNote.htmlThe author focuses on innovative business solutions. To find out how virtual collaboration techniques, workshops and classes can increase the effectiveness of your organization and bring remote teams together, visit Woodside Global Partners at:
http://beyondpredictable.com. Or send an e-mail to Peter Pollack at ppollack@beyondpredictable.com.