It doesn’t take much experience in the field of business analysis to realise that the success of a project and the pursuit of effective solutions will typically depend on a shared vision, comprehensive understanding, and alignment among the stakeholders.
In the process of achieving these critical objectives, most business analysts turn to workshops, one of the most potent tools in their arsenal.
The importance of workshops as a business analysis technique
can hardly be overstated. They serve as catalysts for driving collaborative and interactive sessions where all relevant stakeholders, as well as subject matter experts, can actively engage, exchange and explore ideas, and make informed decisions as a group.
However, bringing diverse stakeholders together and providing them with a structured and focused environment to work in can be a fairly difficult and often daunting task.
Still, with some practice and a solid understanding of basic workshop concepts, business analysts can become highly skilled in crafting and facilitating workshops that can empower key stakeholders to deal with complex business issues, discover new opportunities, define and analyse requirements, and transform raw ideas into actionable plans.
While workshops can often vary in form, some basic principles are the same and can be applied to every session no matter the purpose and structure of the specific session.
Below, we will take a closer look at these core principles and provide a detailed guide on conducting successful workshops.
Table of Contents
Workshops as a Business Analysis Technique
In the context of business analysis, a workshop is a facilitated and structured gathering of stakeholders and subject matter experts, both from the business and technical community, typically with different perspectives, aspirations, and areas of expertise and responsibility.
The main objective of a workshop is to collaboratively explore, analyse, and discuss business needs, opportunities, and problems in order to generate ideas, reach a consensus on a certain issue, or identify, define, and prioritise requirements for a particular initiative or project.
Thanks to the ability to provide a quick turnaround of information and multiple sources of expert knowledge, workshops are especially useful in circumstances that require a more complex discussion than a simple meeting.
With different people providing different suggestions and asking different questions, an issue can be approached from multiple angles, ensuring an effective and comprehensive solution.
Depending on the scope and complexity of the entire project or the issue at hand, workshops can vary in format or duration. In most cases, they will include a combination of brainstorming, group discussions, role-playing, visual modelling, problem-solving exercises, and other techniques.
The facilitator, often a business analyst, orchestrates the workshop, making sure everyone is actively participating, managing time, and promoting an inclusive and open environment for discussion and collaboration.
Depending on the area of expertise and the purpose of the particular workshop, business analysis can also be an active participant.
Workshop Roles
Each participant in a workshop has a certain role, with a unique contribution that helps the successful workshop execution.
Below is the overview of the key roles that are typically involved in a workshopping process.
Sponsor
The sponsor is not necessarily involved in the workshop itself but is responsible for the result of the workshopping process. This role is often assumed by a senior executive or a stakeholder who has significant authority and influence.
The sponsor’s involvement is the key to ensuring that the workshop is aligned with the organisation’s strategic objectives and that the outcome meaningfully contributes to the overall success of the projects.
Among other things, the sponsor typically plays a role in setting workshop objectives, allocating resources, and providing overall direction.
Facilitator
This role is usually assumed by a business analyst or a professional facilitator and their main duty is to orchestrate the workshop process to maximise collaboration, engagement, and productivity.
The key responsibilities of a workshop facilitator include planning and preparation, setting the tone and guiding discussion, keeping everyone focused on the purpose and desired outcome of a workshop, and facilitating decision-making and potential conflict resolutions.
Scribe
The scribe captures the key discussions, decisions, and action items during a workshop. They play a huge role in making sure that the valuable insights obtained during a workshop, as well as issues deferred during a particular session, are preserved and documented.
The responsibilities of a scribe include note-taking, capturing visuals, summarising discussions, and complaining post-workshop documentation.
Timekeeper
The timekeeper plays a key role in keeping track of time spent on each item on the agenda and thus making sure that the workshop progresses smoothly, with all the activities completed within a predefined timeframe.
Keeping the workshop activities on schedule is essential in ensuring maximum productivity and achieving the workshop’s set objectives.
So, to keep everything running smoothly, a timekeeper has too, among other responsibilities, monitor time, adapt the workshop pace as needed, balance the time allocation, and communicate time constraints to all participants.
Participants
For most workshops, participants include key stakeholders and subject matter experts. Each of them contributes their perspectives, expertise, and creativity to the collective exploration of a certain issue.
The success of a workshopping process is hardly possible without the active engagement and collaboration of all participants.
Besides taking an active part in the discussion, the participants are also responsible for adhering to the set rules of the workshop process, committing to the decisions made at the workshop, and providing constructive feedback and suggestions.
How to Conduct a Workshop?
The success of the workshop is contingent on having every stage of the process conducted properly and approaching every step with due diligence.
This means that a business analyst or anyone else responsible for the perfectly performed workshop process has to go through the process of careful planning, effective facilitation, and well-executed post-workshop activities.
Workshop Preparation
Before a workshop evens starts, business analysis has plenty of work to do in planning and preparation.
There are several tasks that need to be performed to ensure that the workshop will achieve its sweet objectives:
- Identifying and defining the desired outcomes and the purpose of the workshop: Every workshop needs to have clearly defined objectives and desired outcomes. Furthermore, the purpose and the goals of the workshop need to be shared and agreed upon by all the participants. This will ensure that all participants have a shared understanding of what specific information needs to be elicited or discussed during the workshop. Also, the clearly defined objective will help the facilitator and participants get back on track if anyone wanders off-topic during the discussion.
- Selecting participants: The next step in workshop preparation is selecting the participants. Depending on the issue, the workshop should typically include the relevant stakeholders and subject matter experts (SME)
. It’s also important to ensure diverse representations of roles and perspectives. The number of participants will depend on the objective and the specific issue discussed at the workshop. Some will work better with a larger number of participants, while for some workshops it’s better to form a smaller group. Additionally, this step should also serve to identify the facilitator and the scribe for the workshop. - Creating the agenda and setting the timeframe: The agenda is one of the key tools in planning the workshop as it helps outline topics to be discussed and sets the sequence of activities needed to achieve the set goal. Plus, it determines the time allocation for each segment of the workshop. It should include the main points of discussion, a list of visual aids to be used during the workshop, and all the activities and exercises planned for a certain point of the process. Sharing the agenda and other reading materials with selected participants will help all the attendees have the best chance of being prepared for the workshop and help them contribute in the most productive way.
- Arranging the room logistics and equipment: This part of workshop preparation is often overlooked but can be crucial for the success of the workshopping process. The room should e large enough to comfortably fit all the participants, but not too large to prevent effective communication. It’s also important to prepare all the necessary equipment in advance. This may include whiteboards, diagram-building kits, flip charts, PCs, projectors, teleconferencing technology, and other items. Other amenities, such as refreshments, writing materials, or name card badges should also be secured.
Workshop Facilitation
With all the preparation and planning done, it’s time to focus on what’s needed to facilitate a successful workshop.
- Setting the tone: Once all the participants are in the room, the workshop should start with greeting everyone, explaining the objectives, reviewing the agenda, setting up the ground rules, and emphasising the importance of active participation. Creating a positive and inclusive atmosphere will help everyone feel comfortable and motivated to participate and contribute to the discussion.
- Icebreaker activity: The session should be initiated with an icebreaker activity to get the meeting off to a positive start. Everyone should be allowed to make a short intro about themselves, especially if it’s a group of people working together for the first time.
- Encouraging participation: It’s important to involve everyone and ensure that all participants have their views heard and respected. It’s particularly useful to have people from different departments interact with each other so they can view the problem from different perspectives. The facilitator should oversee the discussion and manage any participants that seem disengaged or dominating. Sometimes using a story telling approach to the workshop can increase participation.
- Eliciting information: During the workshop, a facilitator should employ various elicitation techniques, such as brainstorming, group discussions, or mind mapping to gather information and requirements. Therefore, it’s important to ask questions, bring up issues for discussion, and clarify any assumptions that arise during the workshop process.
- Dealing with conflicts: As workshops typically feature a diverse group of participants with differing viewpoints, it’s perfectly normal for some form of conflict to occur. It’s often a positive thing as it signals that stakeholders care about the issue being discussed. Instead of setting conflicts aside, they should be brought to the surface and resolved, either during the workshop or by setting a course of action and a time frame for the resolution. Of course, all conflicts should be dealt with in a calm and professional manner.
- Recording the proceedings and outputs: All the key points, decisions, and action items discussed during the workshop should be well-documented. Before the workshop is finished, there should be a recap of all the agreed actions, so the participants are reminded of what they’re expected to do and when they should do it. The successful recording of the workshop outputs will make sure that the participants’ responsibilities are 100% clear.
Post-Workshop Activities
Once the discussion part of the process is over, it’s important to follow up on the activities conducted during the process, so that everything the participants have agreed upon can become actionable and have a positive impact on the organisation. Post-workshop activities include:
- Consolidating the findings: All notes created during the workshop should be reviewed and completed, so the information gathered during the workshop can be easily consolidated. It’s best to do this as soon as possible while the details of the workshop are still fresh in memory.
- Validating and prioritising: When the information from the workshop is consolidated, the findings should be validated with the other stakeholders to ensure that the requirements and other information are accurate and can be properly prioritised.
- Communicating outcomes: The outcomes from the workshop, especially the agreed-upon requirements and decisions should be shared with the relevant stakeholders, even if they didn’t take part in the discussion.
- Follow-up and actionable items: For every action item arising from the workshop activity, you should assign responsibility to a certain individual or group. Everyone involved should have a clear understanding of what needs to be done next and by what date. It’s a good idea to provide the workshop participants with a mechanism for feedback and review.
- Tracking progress: The success of the workshop activities will greatly depend on tracking the progress of all action items identified and assigned during the workshop. Each item should be monitored until completion. The actions log should be shared when distributing the workshop output as this will allow for easier tracking and reaffirming of certain actions, as well as serve to motivate participants to complete the actions assigned to them.
Workshop Templates
Business Analysis Doctor has a set of workshop templates including workshop agenda templates including a sample of what to include as a workshop agenda.
Business Analysis Excellence has a business analysis and agile template package and includes workshop templates such as workshop plan, workshop agenda, workshop actions sheet, workshop invitation email, workshop thank you email, meeting agenda, meeting minutes.