Prioritization workshop template

How to conduct “offsite” workshops to help executives prioritize, online without losing the collaborative magic that comes from face-to-face workshops? How to get everyone together for a sustained period of time whilst operating on different timelines? Impossible? Think not! ThoughtWorks!

1. In order to identify the most important initiatives, participants are asked to review business cases for 16 initiatives, or hypotheses, and prioritize them by voting. This asynchronous pre-work got everyone thinking about the initiatives so the time together was more engaging and effective.

2. Then it’s time for group exercises to ‘breakout’ into whilst remote. Each group collaborates in a different section of the mural and on a different Zoom call to define the order of implementation for the top priorities from exercise one.

3. Coming together 25 minutes later to reconvene, with each group sharing six priorities. This is a great way to see if any patterns emerge. Groups’ prioritizations will differ, which prompts important discussions among the team. Based on these conversations, they will consolidate some initiatives, define priorities and add valuable but less critical initiatives to their backlog.