Brainstorms
Some unresearched, opinionated thoughts on making brainstorms as good as possible.
Diverge, then Converge
- first go wide to explore the limits of the domain and get some creative ideas
- then focus in on the most promising ideas
Timeboxed
Open-ended thoughtwork can take up as much time as you’re willing to give it.
Forward movement needs to happen at some point.
Three is often a good number of participants for brainstorms.
- more likely to get some diversity of experience and thought
- not so much diversity that you can’t actually converge on anything
- everyone can still feel like an active participant in the conversation
Brainstorms should have a very narrow focus.
A clear goal or question can keep the domain from growing too wide.
You can’t boil the ocean.
Counterpoint: It’s Time to Retire the Phrase: “Don’t Boil the Ocean”.
With complicated problems, it’s often true that you shouldn’t try to boil the ocean. These problems are more straightforward, so you can afford to limit your focus to only a critical few areas, break big things down into smaller parts, identify a tighter scope, and rein in any attempt to expand it.
With complex problems, however, limiting things in this way will backfire. It’s critical to boil the ocean, because:
- You can’t limit your focus to only a few critical areas. With complex problems, you don’t know what’s critical and you don’t know how those areas might be connected to each other.
- You can’t make progress on parts in isolation. While it’s tempting to break a big, complex problem into smaller parts and tackle them in isolation, one by one, this will fail because different facets aren’t actually isolated from each other and doing something to one may well have an unforeseen and unintended impact on another.
- You can’t pick a scope in advance and shut down anyone who strays from scope. With complex problems, no one knows at the start where the answers lie, what matters and what doesn’t matter, and where potential discoveries, insights, and dead ends await.
Larger group brainstorms should have a facilitator.
Keep things focused and on track.
Larger groups might need to be split up.
A large group could be split into several concurrent brainstorms (of 3 participants each?) and brought back together at the end of a period of time.
