Ideating

@
ABC Corp GD Team

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Initiating Idea Harvesting Process for ABC Corp Offshore Team: ............................ 3
Capturing Your Ideas - Idea Tracker: ......................................................................... 3
Ideating - Arranging First Workshop:......................................................................... 4
3.1
Pre-circulated Material and Requests: ................................................................ 4
3.2
Nominating an Idea Coordinator and Workshop Facilitator: ............................. 4
3.3
Idea Workshop-I: ................................................................................................ 5
Idea Consolidation, Report Out and Prioritization: .................................................... 6
Preparing and Presenting Business Case Documents (BCD): .................................... 6
Presenting the Ideas and related Business Case Document to the Leadership Team: 7
Conclusion: ................................................................................................................. 7

Document Prepared By
Pradeep Dash
[dash.pradeep@gmail.com]

Version
0.1

Date
4/27/12

Chronological Summary of Steps & Actions

Step#

Action Taken

Initiating Idea Harvesting Process for ABC Corp Offshore Team:

Capturing Your Ideas - Idea Tracker:
Ideating - Arranging First Workshop:
Pre-circulated Material and Requests:
Nominating an Idea Coordinator and Workshop Facilitator:
Idea Workshop-I:
Idea Consolidation, Report Out and Prioritization:
Preparing and Presenting Business Case Documents (BCD):

Presenting the Ideas and related Business Case Document to the Leadership Team:

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3

Date/s
5th-Oct-2011

Oct-11
Nov-11
7th-Nov-2011

Dec-11
Jan-12
27th-Feb2012

"Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each

other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something
that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem"
- Steve Jobs

Initiating Idea Harvesting Process for ABC Corp Offshore Team:

Date: 10/5/2011
Offshore DPE Mr X arranged a session with Mr Y, Service Delivery Manager for XXX account,
to share his ideas with senior team members regarding streamlining Knowledge Management
process followed in ABC Corp Offshore Team. Mr Y had leaded the way to establish a robust
Knowledge Management Process for Hertz account, of which Idea Harvesting was one of the
key aspects. Based upon the discussion the team decided to initiate a culture of Ideating in
ABC Corp Account. The initial plan comprised of following important points,

Planning for an account level Idea Tracker (FSA/Technology Specific) to track ideas and
inputs from practitioners for application functionality improvements and after a detailed
analysis can select the ideas to be submitted to BAG(Idea) Tool as formal proposal.
Idea Workshops should be arranged in intervals to encourage people to come up with ideas
related to improvement of application functionality, application problem areas, recurring
issues, reusable components, process improvements etc.
Key Account Members can brainstorm on those ideas captured from Idea Workshop and
list out feasible ideas which can be submitted to BAG(Idea) Tool as formal proposal.

Capturing Your Ideas - Idea Tracker:

A simple excel template was created to track the ideas from team members. The template
captures, Ideas with basic details,
Idea #: A number assigned to each idea
Category: To categorize Ideas (Application Improvement, Delivery Improvement Process
Improvement, People Improvement, Others)
Application/Process Area Name: To capture the application or process area addressed by
the proposed idea.
Problem Addressed: Existing issue/problem/application functionality/process area related
loopholes addressed by the Idea.
Proposed Solution: The solution proposed as part of the Idea addressing the pain area
specified in Problem Addressed column.
Proposed By: Who proposed the Idea.
Owners: People assigned to look into the Idea and refine it further. It may or may not
include the proposer of the Idea.
Findings after Brainstorming: To note find outs from brainstorming sessions on the Idea.

Idea Tracker.xls

3.1

Ideating - Arranging First Workshop:

Pre-circulated Material and Requests:

Before a week, it was conveyed to the team members that we are going to have an Idea
workshop, where the team is expected to come up with Ideas addressing following aspects
of AMS project,

Ideas addressing application related recurring/redundant issues, manual intervention,

application functionality improvement etc.
Ideas contributing towards application stability, usability and maintainability.
Ideas related to delivery improvement- planning, estimation, verification & validation
(V&V) etc.
Ideas related to Process Improvement.
Others- Miscellaneous Ideas which do not fall in above categories.

The Idea Tracker was placed in a shared location and team members are requested to log
their ideas with the Idea tracker.

3.2

Nominating an Idea Coordinator and Workshop Facilitator:

Idea Coordinator gives idea submitters an internal partner with the power to help advance
the idea forward, enhancing the velocity with which ideas turn into results. A senior team
member having good understanding about the applications, technical expertise and process

area related understanding fits for the position. Idea Coordinator can double up as workshop
Facilitator or the role can be rotated among team members to facilitate workshops which
would bring more enthusiasm and inclusiveness among team.
Pradeep Dash coordinates the Idea Harvesting process for the offshore team and the
workshops were facilitated by different team members in coordination with Mr X, Pradeep,
Mr Z.

3.3

Idea Workshop-I:
Date: 11/07/2011
Facilitators: Pradeep Dash
An Idea workshop is a platform to bring project team together to brain storm on various
positives & not so positives areas of the project in a relaxed but charged environment. A
brief overview about Idea harvesting and the intent of the workshop were presented to
team members by Mr X. The ideas already registered with Idea Tracker were reviewed and
people were encouraged to come of with ideas related to application functionality
improvement, process improvement etc.
For reference the presentation from Lean team encourages to cover below key areas of
AMS account. Thus the facilitator and Idea coordinator should moderate/guide the
discussion accordingly.

All total 25 ideas were listed with the Idea Tracker in first workshop. Here is a Wordle
(http://www.wordle.net/) version of the listed Ideas,

Idea Consolidation, Report Out and Prioritization:

Each Idea Workshop is followed with an Idea consolidation, report out and prioritization session
where senior team members and PM/SDM/DPE meet to discuss and prioritize the ideas
considering their business relevance and importance.
Out of 25, twelve ideas were considered to be taken forward in first phase.

Assessment Criteria:

Business Criticality & Present Need

Ideas addressing critical application related redundant/recurring issues.
Aligned to ABC mandate process/IT Best Practices
Ideas enabling the team to adhere ABC Mandate processes like eliminating manual
database intervention, enhancing Job performance with Query optimization etc.
Client Value Add & Innovation
Ideas which address overlooked areas of an application support like keeping AIDs up
to date, proposal to develop a system to track application support matrix etc.
Best Practices (Process Area related)
Ideas suggesting process area related improvements.

Also during prioritization the continuous improvement goals shared by ABC Corp was taken
into account and each idea was judged considering most applicable improvement goals listed
with the shared guideline.

Preparing and Presenting Business Case Documents (BCD):

Once the Ideas are prioritized and selected for taken forward, a BCD template was prepared
and shared with Idea owners to prepare a business case for respective Ideas.

Key Components of the Business Case document are,

Description of the idea
Current State
Future State
High level estimates for the idea implementation
Dependencies if any
Risks involved
Business Benefits to the customer
Value add/Process Improvement
Dollar Benefits (Return on Investment)
A session was organized in which the Idea Owners presented respective business cases to
the team, Each Idea Business Case was discussed and analyzed where the team members
discussed about different aspects of the idea and action owners took suggestive notes to refine
the business cases.
The updated BCD documents were shared with Idea Coordinator for further action.

Sample Business Case Template:

Business Case
Template

Presenting the Ideas and related Business Case Document to the Leadership Team:
A session was arranged with GEO Team Leads, BAM and Offshore DPE to present those
Ideas. The action owners presented the Ideas to the leadership team and their effort was well
appreciated and further action plan prepared.
Taking the mantle forward the Team Leads and Offshore Tech Leads discussed about the
Ideas and decided to take up them with the ABC Team for further action. Till now few ideas are
discussed with respective APMs, IT Managers and Director from ABC Corp. Few are already
implemented, generating great client satisfaction.
Implemented Ideas:
Optimizing LBO ETL Job, reducing execution time to 30 minutes from 2.5 hours.
Optimizing EQIS ETL Job, reducing execution time to 10 minutes from 2 hours.
Important Ideas Presented or are being planned to be presented to PDIT:
Several Ideas for CAORM application are presented to the business
Team is working on few Ideas related to EGIS, GTMS, proposed Solution Support Matrix
Tracker and other applications to be presented to PDIT.

IDEA Template.ppt

Conclusion:
Idea Harvesting is a continuous process. Till now the offshore team has held three Idea
Workshops and same number of Brainstorming sessions resulting in several ideas. Continuous

support from the leadership team has motivated the practitioners to come up with innovative
ideas. It has helped the team to enhance their application understanding, improve the
productivity/gainful utilization level and confidence level. Worthy to note, an array of innovative
ideas contributing towards application stability, improved usability and maintainability, process
improvements will definitely boost client confidence on support team creating a win-win
situation for both ABC Corp. Happy Ideating!!
Contact me for a workshop @ dash.pradeep@gmail.com