Discovery
Goals & Anti-Goals
Identify and prioritize key product, business, project, and/or consulting engagement goals and anti-goals (non-goals)
Length
45-60 min
Participants
Core team, stakeholders
Why Do It
- Focus your time and effort
- Align yourselves around shared goals
- Avoid any unnecessary or unwanted surprises
When To Do It
- As early as possible during a project
- During a kickoff
How To Do It
- Define business goals
- Define product goals
- Define project goals
- Define anti-goals
Step by Step
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Draw 4 columns on the whiteboard, one for each type of goal. Put anti-goal column off to the side to introduce it later.
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Write out goal types on board along with prompts:
- Product goals - “What impact do we want to have on our product space?”
- Business goals - “What does success look like from a business perspective? Are there any important dates that we need to consider?”
- Project / Consulting engagement goals - “As a team, what do we want to accomplish during our time together?”
- Anti-goals - “What do we want to accomplish someday that would distract the team today?”
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Give 7 minutes of brainstorming time. Ask everyone to write as many ideas as possible, 1 per sticky note.
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In 2 minutes, have each person pick their top 8 goals for each category and rip up everything else. Remember to mention that this is okay!
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Go around the room and have everyone share out the 8 goals they selected. Have a co-facilitator put the sticky notes on the board in the right columns.
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As each person shares out, ask other people if they have a duplicate. Group these similar goals together.
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When everyone has shared, hand out 6 dots per person and have everyone dot vote on their top 2 product, business, and project/consulting engagement goals (there’s no need to vote on the anti-goals). Circle the top 2 goals that emerge.
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Confirm with key stakeholder(s) if there’s anything else really important that we’ve missed. If so, circle those as well or write them down.
Example
