Problem Identification: How To Identify Challenges That Are Holding Your Project Back In Less Than An Hour
It’s a beautiful summer day. The perfect day to do a little sailing. As the sun kisses your skin and the wind blows through your hair you suddenly hear the clanging of thick, unbreakable chains and come to an almost abrupt halt. You realize that the for some strange reason the anchor has dropped which of course prevents you from moving forward and you wonder why.
Working on a project can be like being on that sailboat. Initially, everything seems to be going well and the project is moving forward. There’s nothing but smooth sailing so to speak and then all of a sudden the anchor drops. There is this pesky little problem that starts to hold the team back but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is.
You don’t want to waste time being stagnant so it’s time to raise anchor and get back on the move. Two or more heads are better than one so you decide to get the team together to try to figure things out. What would be the best exercise to help you to quickly identify the problem?
The best exercises for identifying problems
I personally would recommend the “Sailboat”. It’s one of the best exercises for finding problems and challenges where they appear vague. What you do is give two blocks of sticky notes to each member of the team. They should be different colors. I’ll let you chose. Then they each need a marker and eight circular dots.
Step 1 - Everyone writes 3-6 positive things (what’s moving the project forward?). This should take five minutes. Remember one thing per sticky note.
Step 2 - Take five minutes for each person to present their positives by only reading what they have written on their sticky notes. No discussion is necessary.
Step 3 - Everyone writes as many negative things as possible that are holding the project back. These will not be presented so people can let loose. This should take eight minutes. One negative per sticky note.
Step 4 - Everybody should stick the negatives on the wall or digital workspace underneath the boat without discussion. Remove the duplicates. Allow 8 minutes for this step.
Step 5 - With eight sticky dots per person, each individual will vote on the challenges that held them back personally the most. There are no voting rules here. All eight can be put on one problem if a person feels that strongly about it. Voting takes eight minutes.
Step 6 - Remove the sticky notes and put them back on the wall/workspace in the order of most voted at the top to least voted at the bottom. One minute.
It’s as easy as that! Now you have the core problems that need to be addressed identified in just a little over 30 minutes. Getting this point would have been so long and painful had a verbal discussion been had. Try this exercise out and let me know how it goes.