Part Two

Controversies

"How a new information system will have to support our order entry activities for 24 hour deliveries. The new order entry activities as described in Large Document X and approved by Big Guy Y have to be considered." A purpose like that for your workshop, and you know you will have some trouble. Probably someone in the workshop is no fan of Big Guy Y. Thinks he doesn't know a thing about order taking. However, the Large Document X is approved and is the basis for the workshop. T, R, O, U, B, L, E.

Perhaps one of the workshops subjects is reorganized for the 100th time. Maybe "ISO Certification" is the "soup du jour" (hype of the day) at the company, so everyone just wants to write large documents. Possibly the same workshop has taken place last year, and no one heard a thing about that one… Controversies on the subjects of the workshops. Find them. You really need help with this one. Again talk to people and listen to them.

Strategy

Given the controversies and the list of subjects you put on the form in the previous steps, you should determine how to handle things, how to approach the subjects strategically. I know, I said the goal is to make everyone a winner. Take care of all stakes. But probably not every one in the workshop is feeling lucky due to the controversies. If people don't want to be concerned with the project in the first place, they can frustrate the process of conducting the workshop. If they are out to sabotage and are not into the win-win mood, you will not get them. Not during the workshop. You can handle them later on. Be pragmatic, you also need an end result, so don't let them block your workshop.

For the Big Guy Y hater, bring it as a given. This is it, you can't do a thing about it, so stop whining. Be passive, confronting, whatever flavor you have up your sleeve (smell that shirt!).

For this ISO thing, you might try making the issue bigger, bolder, more abstract. Like, if someone yaps about "documenting every thing", make it in little steps bigger: "Yeah, you are right. You should document it, and have a great structure to support that. You want every thing stored in one place. So you can access it from everywhere. But of course, to be effective, you should also register this, and that. So you can cross reference it with…." If you can avoid the sarcasm and sound sincere, they will bring up that they're not ready for it. I love this one.

The purpose of this step in the preparation of the workshop is that you think up front the strategies you might have to use. In this way, you can prepare some information or invite some one to the workshop to neutralize the controversy.

Result

What will be there when the workshop is over? The requirements of the end result can be written down as a story, as a formal specification in some cryptic scientific notation, or some cool graphics. There is so much research done on this subject. How to check the set of inconsistencies? How to create a graph from Here To Eternity?

Just use the medium the key stakeholders are used to. If they like to tell stories, tell a story. If they are mathematicians, use formal calculus. If they are computer scientists, use bloody graphs. I like to tell stories myself.

Specify how the result will look like. How you can read it. Close your eyes, and see it!

And finally, the rest

To close your preparation, you can specify the participants of the workshop. Who are they, what is their position within the organisation, and, most important, why are they invited for the workshop; what role do they play in the discussions; leader, chairman, scribe…

If you want to use tools, you should write them down, and arrange that they are there.

This one deserves some emphasis: On which way will the results be communicated back to the participants, and what are the next steps for these results?

And only at this stage, you are able to create an agenda for the workshop. Only here, at the end of the preparation you have enough information to create a good agenda.

Enough swimming on the side of the lake, let's jump in.