A vast majority of a team’s work value comes directly from the process of generating insights and ideas. How we manage those ideas and extract the most from them will significantly impact the success of a project.

Brainstorming is a tool that enables the consideration of a range of ideas by stimulating a creative thinking process.

Here are the Do’s and Don’ts that I have compiled for holding Brainstorming sessions.

Do:

• Allow participants to complete their ideas.
• Be brief in each idea iteration.
• Look for quantity in the early round of ideas.
• Categorize and organize the ideas as they come through.
• Continue building on existing ideas.

Don’t:

• Make judgements.
• Criticize ideas.
• Paraphrase some else idea when scribing.
• Let someone take over the session.
• Stick in one idea assuming that the solution was found.

Brainstorming produces many ideas in a short time period nevertheless, this tool is just the entry level when managing ideas, affinity diagrams and multi-voting tools are another set of tools which when merged with an effective brainstorming session allow us to manage ideas and get the most value of team’s work. I’ll deep dive on those soon.

EP