by dbward | Jul 15, 2019 | Uncategorized
Today’s post is the first in a series by guest bloggers Alex Feinman (with Tom Seibert and Tammy Freeman)
Sometimes, you have to mix and match methods to get the results you need. This story is example of how important it is to be able to modify and adapt the plan in response to new facts and constraints.
MITRE was called in to facilitate a conversation about replacing or upgrading a COTS piece of software that a sponsor was using. We put together a session that began with knowledge elicitation, to understand their domain; then focused on establishing user requirements; finally some progress toward conclusions and agreements on actions.
The sponsor sent close to 30 people to the two-day event. MITRE brought in a team of facilitators to help manage the large number of people.
While our team had some experience with the software in question, we also had more experience with other, better software. Hence, we were expecting to elicit the sponsor’s needs, as a step toward potentially guiding them toward a better option.
This plan, as they say, did not survive contact with reality.
The Map is Not the Terrain
We were expecting our participants to be a mix of end users, ops/sysadmin folks, and program administrators. Instead, on arrival, we discovered that the bulk of attendees were developers—some sponsor-based, and some who were contractors.
The two sets of developer were working on competing systems, both used by the sponsor. End users had to switch between these systems to get their work done. In addition to this, we had only a few actual end users, plus a number of sysadmins, who sat between those two populations.
The group was on the edge of fracturing, with finger-pointing starting to become more apparent—the makers of each system were defending their turf and jobs, and beginning to think about bad-mouthing the other “team”. It was time to help these developers understand how things looked from the user’s perspective, and fast.
Day One: Finding Common Ground
After a quick consult, the facilitators decided to continue to gather data on the work context—getting a sense for what things were on everyone’s minds about the systems. Concerns by most users centered around ease of use issues, responsiveness (or lack thereof) from development teams, and annoyances related to switching between two different systems with similar purposes. Concerns from sysadmins and developers centered on deployment and provisioning, and licensing of third-party data sources.
We used dot voting to identify which concerns were foremost. This backfired slightly: nearly everyone voted for “merge the two systems”—a solution masquerading as a pain. Additionally, some near-duplicates needed to be merged. In retrospect, we could have used a round of affinitization or Stormdrainingto reduce the number of issues prior to voting.
Based on this finding, we decided to dive into understanding why the systems were currently separate, and whether there were any benefits there. A subgroup worked to put together a rough system diagram on a whiteboard wall. This revealed a huge amount of complexity hiding behind the user interface and helped legitimize the current split situation. One of the systems had strong processing capabilities, while the other had a much stronger UI. With this brought to light, we worked to help the group see that there might be a double-win involving pieces from both systems.
Armed with this data, we gave the group six areas to focus on, ranging from user workflows and UI issues to system administration, data ingestion, and data processing. This allowed the group to break up naturally by role, which was both helpful and harmful—helpful in that each group made progress, but harmful in that it did not work toward building group coherence. However, it was a necessary step toward group formation—letting the folks there understand that we were intending to listen to them, understand their situation, and help them prioritize their concerns.
Informal discussions, such as those happening over lunch, were critical to getting folks to buy into MITRE’s role as an unbiased facilitator. These conversations helped cement their trust that we weren’t there to put half of them out of work, weren’t there to promote one system over another, and certainly weren’t there to sell them on software we created.
We also invested time with particularly reticent folks to bring them around to seeing other people’s perspectives, and give them hope of open lines of communications. While often overlooked during use of ITK “methods”, these informal conversations can make or break a long event such as this one!
By day’s end, we had a commitment from everyone to keep working together and keep talking—a great start given where we’d begun.
Stay tuned for the rest of the story in next week’s episode!
by dbward | Jun 10, 2019 | Uncategorized
Blackout poem by Austin Kleon (austinkleon.com/)
The first time you swing a hammer, you’re going to bend some nails and probably hit your thumb once or twice. Even though a hammer is an exquisitely simple tool, getting good at using a hammer requires practice (and if you’ve ever seen a master carpenter use a hammer, it’s a thing of beauty – google “Larry Haun human nail gun” if you want to explore that particular rabbit trail).
The same is true with the techniques and methods in the Innovation Toolkit. Each one is delightfully low-tech and deliberately simple… but don’t be surprised if the first time you use one, it’s harder than it looks.
I encountered this situation first-hand when I introduced the Lotus Blossom to some high school interns. This is probably the simplest tool in the whole kit, and although they understood the application right away, they struggled mightily to figure out how to use it. I let them wrestle and flail for a while, exploring and experimenting with how to use the Lotus Blossom on their project. Then I showed them how I would have done it – in less than five minutes, we had a clear, useful artifact they could use for the rest of the project.
The point is, when it comes to tools, mastery takes time and practice. Be patient with yourself. Don’t get discouraged if you bend some metaphorical nails. Find a coach who can help guide you through the process. And most of all, don’t give up.
by rgregorio | May 13, 2019 | Uncategorized
When we’re given a new assignment at work, the first questions we often ask are:
- What needs to be done?
- How are we going to do it?
- When is it due?
- Who is it for?
These are each important questions that should not be missed, but there’s another question that we should make a point to ask and answer as soon as possible: “Why?” This deceptively simple question can come in many forms, such as:
- Why are we doing this project?
- Why is it important?
- Why am I the right person for the task?
Some might be apprehensive to ask their leader “Why?” for fear of being met with, “Because I said so!” It’s important to build a culture where the Why question is encouraged rather than dismissed. We assure you that answering the “why” of a project is never wasted time. Defining the why prevents us from wasting time going down the wrong path, missing opportunities, or focusing on the wrong aspects of a project.
A popular technique for getting to the true root of it all is “5 Why’s.” Because sometimes asking why once is not enough. Maybe the first one will get you to, “Because we want to make the process faster.” Why does the process need to go faster? Because our employees don’t have enough time to innovate. Why don’t they have enough time? As the question often enough and you just might arrive at a powerful, unexpected insight.
Understanding the purpose of a project will lead us to the root of the problem we’re trying to solve. Not sure what problem your project is trying to solve? Check out ITK’s Problem Framing tool. Use it alone or with your team. Building consensus around the mad-lib-like problem across the bottom will provide your group with a measure of success and a goal to work towards, and make sure you all know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
by Stephanie Medicke | Apr 15, 2019 | Uncategorized
All companies and teams include multiple disciplines and members with different expertise, so why shouldn’t our meetings and brainstorming sessions?
Multidisciplinary collaboration means building a team of members with different backgrounds and skills that can compensate each other and work together toward the same direction to achieve the same goals. Multidisciplinary teams usually generate a wide range of ideas that are more diverse than a homogenous team can.
Also consider an interdisciplinary approach. Interdisciplinary teams are made up of people with a deep understanding of a particular skillset complimented by beginner or intermediate mastery of a diversity of other disciplines. These teams are not only able to generate many different exclusive ideas, but are able to see connections between seemingly disparate ideas. This mindset and dynamic is critical in the double diamond approach when converging on ideas.
by dbward | Apr 1, 2019 | Uncategorized |
We’ve got a guest blogger this week – ITK superfan and creative partner Liz Borseti, who shares her story of working with Team Toolkit.
As a member of MITRE’s strategic communications team, I thought I knew the most creative people who work at the company. From writers to designers to photographers, my colleagues are brimming with imagination. So when I was asked to work on a communications plan for the new Innovation Toolkit, I figured it was an ordinary assignment. We would bring an artistic perspective to the table, using a part of the brain most of our engineering colleagues don’t usually tap into.
But from the first meeting with Team Toolkit, I was surprised and happy to learn that I was wrong – creativity and imagination exist in abundance across the organization. And ITK turned out to be one of the most creatively intelligent and collaborative projects I have ever had the pleasure to work on.
As we worked diligently to evolve items like the ITK website and logo, there was a constant back and forth between the teams, learning from each other and building upon each other’s design ideas. Where strategic communications brought expert knowledge of writing, editing, and design, ITK complemented with user-centric concepts, toolkit expertise, and even a cartoon series.
Team Toolkit even encouraged our communications team to use the Premortem tool as we designed a pamphlet for the Premortem tool (Toolception!).
Team Toolkit has the skills to extract the maximum potential of any team or individual. Along with their toolkit, they bring a positive, forward-thinking attitude to every project. I was lucky to experience this first hand as we completed some great work together, using the power of collaboration and systemic creative thinking.
For anyone looking to deliver mission impact on their project, ITK is the place to start. Team Toolkit are not just curators for ITK, but they truly believe in the power of innovative thinking to deliver success for MITRE, our sponsors, and our mission.
Liz Borseti
ITK collaborator, user, and superfan
by niomim | Mar 11, 2019 | Uncategorized
Innovation tools are all around us, often in places we might not recognize.
One place we might look over is in schools. Commonly used tools in education are called Graphic organizers. They are learning tools that student’s use to process ideas and help make decisions on concepts and formulate thinking in a way that purposefully makes you display your thoughts down on paper and organize them.
Another tool you might know of is the Venn diagrams. The Venn diagram’s purpose is to organize your thoughts and compare ideas and concepts. Many other tools that are commonly used in schools are flow charts, tables, story maps, sequence/timeline charts and webs. Now with technology being brought into schools these tools have been progressing every day more and more.
Just like The Innovation Toolkit many graphic organizers are similar to the tools in the ITK. An example is the Community Map Tool that is a form of a Venn diagram it is used to develop clear ideas and compare them to each other. All toolkits are very similar with their purpose of helping organizing ideas and concepts and transforming them into something more than just a thought. What’s makes them all different is the environment they are being used. What other places can you find tools and toolkits?
Today’s post is by Team Toolkit’s high school intern, Niomi!
