Event Storming, part 2 - Domain Experts are Busy
What follows, is some reflection after the first exercise (which you can read about here).
Your big enemy is time. Domain Experts are a busy sort, so try to make the workshop as engaging as possible. Postpone any boring bits and don't focus on completing tasks. It's the facilitator's duty to mark hot spots to park any heated discussions and thereby avoiding the participants not participating in the discussion of getting bored. "Postpone ordering events into exact chronological order", Alberto said cheekily - "the developers will do this for you automatically, for free!".
Invite the most important people you can, given your goal, and then spread the knowledge from the event storming throughout the organization. This will, in turn, spark interest for any upcoming discussions which might have a larger hit rate, even if the first meeting had a low turnout.
Do remember, Alberto instructed us, that the stickies on the wall are not engaging for a third-party - the interesting things are the thoughts and discussions that came up during the event storming exercise itself. Therefore, don't waste your time after a meeting documenting the workshop, but instead address the most important problems discovered (the hot spots).
Normally, you are able to identify areas where two stakeholders have a different view on a process, i.e. where there is a conflict. If you're not in the room for the exercise, you're missing out on this.
Problems can be identified by a participant tapping on a note - which is a lot easier than tapping on a person that represents something the participant has an issue with. Abstract things are hard! If a person talk about a problem and I have an issue with the problem at hand, I might project an issue with the person. By having an issue represented as a sticky on a board and tapping on the issue itself, the two parties of the conflict can team up against the problem, instead of one explaining his issue to the other, who naturally feel an urge to defend himself. Good psychology!
Working on walls are better than working on a large roll of paper lying on the floor or on a number of tables. It's a lot harder to clutter the wall down with cruft, such as mugs and pens and the wall naturally leads to most participants standing up during the storming phase and then sitting down and observing the wall during a more reflective phase.
Be aware of the "thinking man pose", as this oftentimes indicates that the participant is not experienced enough to answer a particular question - perhaps he has been asked to be in the meeting as a stand-in, or needing more research.
Talk to any participants that are not a part of the group, are quiet and reserved outside of the meeting to get a sense of any power play that prevents them for participating (or whom should have been invited in their stead).
An average group should contain between 8-12 participants. Starting with a timeline for consistency, ask them to perform the exercise in the previous article, i.e. explore their business domain. After that exercise, we will remove the timeline so that we can reorganize the events (more on that in the next post). It is important that we in the exploration phase do not try to frame our exploration at all - the goal is to expose everything! Often, the value - and risks - lie in the overlapping areas.
Your big enemy is time. Domain Experts are a busy sort, so try to make the workshop as engaging as possible. Postpone any boring bits and don't focus on completing tasks. It's the facilitator's duty to mark hot spots to park any heated discussions and thereby avoiding the participants not participating in the discussion of getting bored. "Postpone ordering events into exact chronological order", Alberto said cheekily - "the developers will do this for you automatically, for free!".
Invite the most important people you can, given your goal, and then spread the knowledge from the event storming throughout the organization. This will, in turn, spark interest for any upcoming discussions which might have a larger hit rate, even if the first meeting had a low turnout.
Do remember, Alberto instructed us, that the stickies on the wall are not engaging for a third-party - the interesting things are the thoughts and discussions that came up during the event storming exercise itself. Therefore, don't waste your time after a meeting documenting the workshop, but instead address the most important problems discovered (the hot spots).
Normally, you are able to identify areas where two stakeholders have a different view on a process, i.e. where there is a conflict. If you're not in the room for the exercise, you're missing out on this.
Problems can be identified by a participant tapping on a note - which is a lot easier than tapping on a person that represents something the participant has an issue with. Abstract things are hard! If a person talk about a problem and I have an issue with the problem at hand, I might project an issue with the person. By having an issue represented as a sticky on a board and tapping on the issue itself, the two parties of the conflict can team up against the problem, instead of one explaining his issue to the other, who naturally feel an urge to defend himself. Good psychology!
Working on walls are better than working on a large roll of paper lying on the floor or on a number of tables. It's a lot harder to clutter the wall down with cruft, such as mugs and pens and the wall naturally leads to most participants standing up during the storming phase and then sitting down and observing the wall during a more reflective phase.
Interpreting body language
Observe body language to identify a participants sense of ownership for a part of the process. Alberto often found that participants would physically take up the part of the chronological event stream that represented their part of the process!Be aware of the "thinking man pose", as this oftentimes indicates that the participant is not experienced enough to answer a particular question - perhaps he has been asked to be in the meeting as a stand-in, or needing more research.
Talk to any participants that are not a part of the group, are quiet and reserved outside of the meeting to get a sense of any power play that prevents them for participating (or whom should have been invited in their stead).
Return of Investment
OK, so what do we get out of all this work? The first deliverable from the event storming, is knowledge sharing - we get a sense of the process we are a part of, and how downstream processes might be affected by ours. Also, there's a value in risk assessment, where we identify words that mean different things in different contexts, something that can have devastating consequences if not addressed.
Facilitation
Facilitator trick: If you organize one of these meetings and participants have a hard time getting going, ask them to put up stickies that represents their work in the organization. People generally doesn't want to come across as someone who doesn't contribute, so this will likely get them going.The exercise should be time-boxed to about two hours. Again, our business experts are busy.
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