Free tool · Workshop board
Run a workshop on a shared board
Sticky notes, frames, arrows and a pen on a board anyone with the link can edit. Start blank, or from one of 109 methods laid out and ready, with its steps, a timer everyone sees and dot voting built in.
Or pick a method below to see how it runs and start from its board.
Cover story
Plan and commit
Imagine a magazine cover story about your success a year or two from now, to agree what success would look like.
- Time40 to 60 minutes
- People3 to 12 people
How it runs on the board
- Set the date2 minPick when the story is published: one or two years out.
- Write the headline8 minvoteEveryone drafts headlines. Vote for the strongest.
- Fill the story20 minWhat happened, what customers said, the numbers, and how we got here.
- Pick what to start10 minWhat has to start now for this story to come true?
As the facilitator you start each step from the board: it shows everyone the step, starts its timer and opens its vote.
Where it comes from
Published by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo in Gamestorming (2010). Amazon's "working backwards" press release, written before a product is built, is a close cousin.
Workshop methods
Retros, kick-offs, idea generation, prioritisation and planning.
Open the session
Get everyone talking and agree what the session is for.
Build the team
Get to know each other, agree how you'll work together, and check how the team is doing.
Two truths and a lie
Each person shares three things about themselves, one of them false, and the group votes on which is the lie.
Personal maps
Each person draws a mind map of themselves (home, work, hobbies, values) so a team learns who it is working with.
Working agreements
A team agrees, in its own words, how it will communicate, meet, decide and handle problems, and writes it down.
Team charter
One page that says why a team exists, what it is aiming for, who does what, and how it will work.
Squad health check
A team rates itself green, amber or red on ten areas such as fun, speed and tech quality, and talks about the reds.
User manual for me
Each person writes a short guide to working with them: how they like to communicate and get feedback, and what helps them do their best work.
Team alignment map
Plan a piece of work together by agreeing the mission, joint objectives, who commits to what, the resources needed and the risks.
Johari window
Four panes of what's known about a person, to themselves and to others, used to grow the open pane through sharing and feedback.
Lead people
Understand what motivates each person, build trust, and spot what's holding a team back.
Moving motivators
Each person ranks ten motivators by how much they matter, then moves each up or down to show how their work feeds or drains it.
Three needs theory
Each person places themselves between achievement, affiliation and power, so the team sees what drives each of them and where they might clash.
Autonomy, mastery and purpose
Look at a team's work through three needs that keep people engaged: a say in how they work, getting better at something, and knowing why.
BRAVING trust inventory
Talk about trust in seven parts (boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgement, generosity) instead of one big word.
Five dysfunctions of a team
Check a team against five layers that build on each other: trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability and attention to results.
Big Five working styles
Each person places themselves on five personality traits to share how they like to work, and the team agrees how to work across differences.
Understand
Look hard at the people, the problem and the system before jumping to answers.
Empathy map
A shared picture of one type of person: what they say, think, do and feel, built from research rather than guesses.
Journey map
Map what a person does, thinks and feels at each stage of getting something done, and find where it goes wrong.
Service blueprint
Map a service from the customer's actions down to the staff, systems and processes behind them that the customer never sees.
Stakeholder map
Place everyone affected by a project by how much power they have over it and how much they care, then plan how to work with each.
Proto-persona
A quick persona built from what the team already believes, written down so the beliefs can be tested with research.
Five whys
Ask why a problem happened, then why that happened, until you reach a cause you can fix rather than a symptom.
Fishbone diagram
Sort the possible causes of a problem into categories along the bones of a fish, so the team looks wider than the first cause it thinks of.
Affinity mapping
Group a pile of notes into themes by moving similar ones together, then name each theme to see what the pile is telling you.
Cynefin framework
Decide how to act by first asking what kind of situation you're in: clear, complicated, complex or chaotic.
Four forces of progress
Map what pushes customers away from today's solution, pulls them to a new one, and the anxiety and habit that hold them back.
Speed boat
Customers add the anchors slowing your product down, and how much faster it would go without each, to show what frustrates them most.
User persona
Turn research into a portrait of a type of user: their goals, pains, gains, habits and how they decide, so the team designs for someone real.
Frame the problem
Turn what you learned into a question worth answering.
How might we
Turn problems and insights into questions that start with "How might we", which invite ideas instead of arguments.
Point of view statement
A one-sentence problem statement built from a user, a need and an insight, so the team agrees what it is solving before solving it.
Hypothesis statement
Write an idea as a testable belief: what we'll build, for whom, the outcome we expect, and the signal that will show we were right.
Generate ideas
Get many options on the board before judging any of them.
Crazy 8s
Sketch eight different ideas in eight minutes, one a minute, to get past the first obvious idea fast.
Brainwriting 6-3-5
Six people write three ideas each, then pass them on to be built on, five rounds over, for up to 108 ideas in half an hour.
Mind map
Start with one topic in the middle and branch outwards, so related ideas sit together and gaps become visible.
Reverse brainstorm
Brainstorm how to make the problem worse, then turn each bad idea around to find good ones.
SCAMPER
Seven prompts (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, reverse) for generating ideas from something that exists.
Storyboard
Show an idea as a short sequence of panels, from the person's problem to their life after using it, before building anything.
Decide
Narrow the options down fairly, without the loudest voice winning.
Prioritise
Rank a backlog with scores, play money or a picture, so what comes next is a choice the team can explain.
Impact and effort matrix
Place each option by how much difference it would make and how hard it would be, to find the quick wins and the big bets.
MoSCoW prioritisation
Sort requirements into must have, should have, could have and won't have this time, to agree scope against a fixed deadline.
$100 test
Each person splits an imaginary $100 between the options, which shows not just what people prefer but how strongly.
Kano model
Sort features by how customers react to them: basics they expect, performance they want more of, and delights they don't expect.
RICE scoring
Score each idea on reach, impact, confidence and effort, then rank by one number that rewards likely wins for little work.
ICE scoring
Rank experiments fast: score each idea's impact, confidence and ease from 1 to 10, combine them, and test the top ones first.
Buy a feature
Give people play money and a priced list of features, then watch what they buy, pool money for and argue over.
Prune the product tree
Draw the product as a tree and have people add ideas as leaves on its branches, to see where it should grow and what's being neglected.
Opportunity scoring
Rate each customer outcome for importance and satisfaction, then look for the ones that matter a lot and are served badly.
House of quality
A matrix that links what customers need to what the product must do, so the requirements serving the most important needs rise to the top.
Systemico model
Lay the backlog out by the user goal each item serves and how engaged a user must be to care, from core needs to exploring further.
Feature buckets
Sort ideas into metrics movers, customer requests, delighters and strategic bets, so each release has a balance of all four.
Eisenhower matrix
Sort tasks by urgent and important into do now, schedule, delegate and drop, so important work stops losing to urgent work.
Plan and commit
Agree goals, owners and risks before people leave the room.
Premortem
Imagine the project has failed, then work out why, so risks get named while there is still time to act on them.
Objectives and key results
Set an ambitious objective and three or so measurable key results that would show you achieved it.
GROW model
Four questions (goal, reality, options, way forward) that take a person or a team from a vague aim to a committed next step.
Cover story
Imagine a magazine cover story about your success a year or two from now, to agree what success would look like.
RACI chart
For each task or decision, agree who is responsible, who is accountable, who is consulted and who is informed.
Who, what, when
Close a session by writing each action with one owner and a date, so decisions turn into work instead of good intentions.
Product and strategy
Canvases and maps for shaping a product and deciding what to build next.
Business model canvas
Nine boxes (customers, value, channels, revenue, costs and the rest) that describe how a business creates and captures value.
Lean canvas
A one-page business plan for a new product: problem, customers, solution, unique value and the numbers that matter.
Opportunity solution tree
A tree from one outcome down to the customer opportunities that could drive it, the solutions for each, and how to test them.
User story map
Lay out what a user does from left to right, the details under each step, then slice releases across the map.
Now, next, later
A roadmap in three columns instead of dates: what the team is doing now, what comes next, and what's further out.
Product vision board
Capture a product's vision, target group, needs, key features and business goals on one board the whole team can point to.
Value proposition canvas
Map a customer's jobs, pains and gains beside your product's pain relievers and gain creators, to check that the two really fit.
Jobs to be done canvas
Describe the job a customer is trying to get done, the stages they go through, and the outcomes they use to judge whether it went well.
Working backwards press release
Write the press release and FAQ for a product before building it, so the team agrees on the customer and the benefit first.
Ladder of needs
Climb from what your product does, to how it does it, to why it matters, to find a vision the team can sell and a way to sort the roadmap.
Design thinking canvas
Plan a design project on one page: the vision, the team, the challenges and the impact, across discover, define, develop and deliver.
Lean UX canvas
Eight questions that turn a business problem into user outcomes, testable hypotheses and the smallest experiment worth running.
Hook model
Map how a product brings people back: the trigger, the action, the reward, and the investment that makes the next visit likelier.
Market and competition
Read the market, the competition and the forces around a business before choosing where to play.
SWOT analysis
List strengths and weaknesses inside the organisation and opportunities and threats outside it, to see a situation before planning.
PESTEL analysis
Scan the world around a business for political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal changes that could help or hurt it.
Porter's five forces
Size up how attractive a market is by looking at rivals, new entrants, substitutes, and the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers.
5C analysis
Look at the company, customers, competitors, collaborators and context together before deciding where and how to compete.
Marketing mix (7Ps)
Check that product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence all tell the same story to the same customer.
Measure progress
Choose the numbers that show whether a product is working, and the behaviour behind them.
HEART framework
Choose user experience metrics for happiness, engagement, adoption, retention and task success, working from goals to signals to numbers.
North Star framework
Agree one metric that captures the value customers get from the product, and the few inputs the team can move to grow it.
Pirate metrics (AARRR)
Follow customers through acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue, and pick one metric for each stage to find the leak.
Agile rituals
Boards for planning, stand-ups and the flow of work in a team.
Kanban board
Columns for each stage of the work, with a limit on how much can be in progress, so the team finishes before it starts more.
Daily stand-up
A short daily check: what moved since yesterday, what's next, and what's in the way, so blockers surface early.
Sprint planning
Agree why the next sprint matters, what the team can take on, and how it will get it done.
Look back
Retrospectives: what worked, what didn't, and what changes next time.
Start, stop, continue
A retrospective in three columns: what to start doing, what to stop, and what to keep, which leads straight to changes.
Mad, sad, glad
A retrospective that starts with feelings: what made people angry, what disappointed them, and what made them happy.
Rose, thorn, bud
Sort observations into roses (what's good), thorns (what's painful) and buds (what has promise), using colour to see the pattern.
Sailboat
Picture the team as a boat: wind pushes it on, anchors hold it back, rocks lie ahead, and the island is the goal.
4Ls retrospective
A retrospective in four quadrants: what people liked, learned, lacked and longed for, which balances facts and wishes.
Starfish retrospective
A five-part retrospective: keep doing, do more of, do less of, stop doing, and start doing.
Run the conversation
Structures that give everyone a turn and keep a discussion moving.
Storytelling methods
Structures for a case study, a pitch or a talk.
Story structures
The skeletons stories have been built on for centuries.
Story spine
Eight sentence starters, from "Once upon a time" to "And ever since then", that give any story a beginning, a turn and an end.
Hero's journey
The pattern behind many myths and films: a hero leaves the ordinary world, is tested, and returns changed, with something to share.
Three-act structure
Set-up, confrontation and resolution, with two turning points that move the story from one act to the next.
Freytag's pyramid
Five parts of a drama (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution) drawn as a rise to a peak and a fall.
Kishōtenketsu
A four-part structure with no central conflict: introduce, develop, twist, then bring the parts together.
Start in the middle
Open on the most gripping moment, then go back to explain how you got there, so the audience is hooked from the first line.
Story shapes
How the hero's fortunes rise and fall from beginning to end.
Man in a hole
Someone gets into trouble and gets out of it, ending better off: the story shape people never seem to tire of.
Overcoming the monster
A hero faces a threat that seems too big to beat, struggles, nearly loses, and wins against the odds.
Rags to riches
Someone starts with little, rises, loses it all in a crisis, and wins it back for good by growing into who they need to be.
Voyage and return
Someone goes into a strange world, is fascinated, then threatened, and escapes home changed by what they saw.
The quest
A hero sets out for a distant goal, meets trials and setbacks on the way, and finally reaches it after one last ordeal.
Make the case
Structures for a pitch, a proposal or a talk that asks for something.
And, but, therefore
Context joined with "and", a problem introduced with "but", and a consequence with "therefore": a story in one sentence.
Situation, complication, question, answer
Open a report or a pitch with what's true, what changed, the question that raises, and your answer to it.
Sparkline
A talk that moves back and forth between how things are and how they could be, then ends on the better future.
Monroe's motivated sequence
Five steps for a speech that moves people to act: attention, need, satisfaction, visualisation and action.
Positioning statement
Who it's for, the need, what it is, the key benefit, and how it differs from the alternative, in two sentences.
Tell it well
Small techniques that make any story easier to follow and remember.
Rule of three
Group your points, examples or reasons in threes, which audiences find easier to follow and remember than two or four.
Show, don't tell
Replace a statement about something with a detail that lets the audience see it for themselves.
Types of conflict
Check what your character is up against: another person, nature, themselves or the system, since conflict is what gives a story its pull.