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COLLABORATIVE WORKSHOPSDo your software projects tend to slide into cost and time overruns? May this be due to poor communication and coordination between IT users and software specialists? If you can answer "yes" to these questions then it might be time to increase team effectiveness and reduce development costs. We can help. Find out how! What are Collaborative Workshops? How Collaborative Workshop can help? How are Collaborative Workshops run? Why hire an external facilitator? When are Collaborative Workshops effective? What are the critical success factors? According to the experts 95% of all software projects slide into cost and time overruns, 93% of which are due to poor communication. While developers tend to focus on software technology, IT users may misinterpret business goals defined by top management or encounter difficulties in conveying their real needs to IT people. Fixing wrong, missing, inconsistent or even conflicting requirements can consume up to one third of total software development costs, and reworking them after software delivery is often 100 times as expensive as during the design phase. Collaborative Workshops is a technique that helps organization determine real users' requirements better and faster. The Collaborative Workshops technique is based on a method that was developed by IBM in 1977 called JAD - Joint Application Design or Development. JAD was designed to include Business users in the development of IT solutions. The objective was to increase software quality and meet users' requirements. The Collaborative Workshops technique has been adapted to satisfy the needs of today's development methodologies (e.g. Object Oriented Analysis & Design, Rapid Application Design). Identified as best practice to gather business requirements, Collaborative Workshops are structured and highly interactive meetings in which carefully selected customers, users and IT people with decision-making authority work together to define, develop and reach closure on agreed deliverables. This technique consists of a series facilitated sessions in which participants develop mutual understanding, commitment and a real sense of ownership.
Collaborative Workshops can help cut development costs by:
Top Collaborative Workshops are carefully planed and prepared meetings that, to be successful, require performing the following activities:
A facilitator's role is to encourage communication among participants and guide the group through a process that will help them achieve their goals more effectively. Her tasks are to:
A facilitator focuses on the process of the workshop and does not influence its content. She holds expertise in group dynamics and uses a range of techniques to manage group participation. She has no personal agenda and avoids sharing her opinion with the group, unless specifically asked. Top An external workshop facilitator is unbiased and can therefore entirely focus on the process of the session without interfering in its content. With her knowledge of project development, system analysis and design, an external facilitator raises questions that help the group to verify their process and outcome. External facilitators are specially trained and have acquired an
expertise in dealing with a variety of groups. With an outsider leading
the workshop, group members tend to participate more openly, and in case
of personal conflict, may content negative emotions and even become
cooperative. When are Collaborative Workshops effective? Collaborative Workshops are not only beneficial for gathering requirements. They present advantages whenever a large group of people (up to 15) needs to solve issues, make quality group decisions and deal with conflicts. Subjects where this technique can also be used are:
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