facilitate-design-workshop

Start with a goal fill-in naming the artifact the group will produce, then follow the universal skeleton: open, ground, diverge, cluster, converge, decide, close. Timebox every activity, keep generation blocks to 5-8 minutes, and build in roughly 20% buffer.

Clarify items before voting, give each person items divided by 4 votes (minimum 3, maximum 6), vote silently and simultaneously, and have the most senior person vote last. Treat the result as a signal for discussion, not a final verdict.

Use dot voting plus an impact-effort matrix for groups under 25 items needing speed, RICE when you have real reach and effort data, MoSCoW when the deadline is fixed, and Kano only with user survey data. With no data, frame impact-effort placements as hypotheses.

Cap remote sessions at 2 hours with breaks every 45-50 minutes, pre-build the board with one frame per activity, move context reading and idea generation to async pre-work, and use a co-facilitator for groups of 6 or more. Replace open questions with round-robin name-calling.

Skip the workshop when you need information individuals already have (use interviews or a survey), when one person owns the decision (write a decision memo), or when you need feedback on finished work (run a review). Workshops are for co-creation, alignment, and group-owned decisions.

Use structured turns for dominators, brief senior stakeholders to speak last, assign skeptics a critic role during convergence, park derailers' topics visibly, and rely on silent writing for quiet participants. Correct the process publicly and the person privately at a break.