During refinement, specifically during the ‘Divergent Thinking’ of the ‘Success Pattern’, people bring in their own points of view vis-vis what is currently being refined.
What they bring could become an ‘Anchor’ wherein other participants’ contributions to the refinement are based off on that anchor.
As a result, nothing ‘new’ comes off that ‘Divergent Thinking’.
‘Divergent Thinking’ is a brainstorming exercise wherein lots of divergent ideas from participants of various backgrounds are offered and gathered.
To counter this, during the ‘Divergent Thinking’, participants should stop having conversations at all. These conversations are actually like an umbrella filtering out the rain storm… it filters out great ideas … conversations are anchors in ‘Divergent Thinking’.
Do not bring an umbrella in a storm — Ted Lasso
Try this approach in your next refinement workshop.
Do not worry … there will be a lot of times for conversations.
That will be after the brainstorming session… when we start to deduplicate and affinity group all ideas that were shared during the brainstorming session.
Then, thereafter, more conversations will happen in the ‘Emergent Thinking’ part of the ‘Success Pattern’.
Then more conversations thereafter … in the ‘Convergent Thinking’ part of the ‘Success Pattern’.
