Mind mapping &

Design Criteria
 Mind mapping
• Mind mapping is the term we'll use for the process of
looking for patterns in the large quantity of data you've
collected during your exploration of What is.
• When to use it: You move into mind mapping when you
feel like you have collected representative data from
each key constituent—customers, suppliers, partners,
and your own operations—and are eager to begin
generating ideas.
• Mind mapping builds a common mind about current
reality and thus decreases people's allegiance to the
solutions they had going in to the project. That is why
mind mapping must be a team sport.
 Exhibit in an Art Gallery
• Organize the gallery according to stakeholder group
and include short quotes.
 Invite shoppers
• Tell a group of thoughtful people—anywhere from
ten to 50—that you want to borrow their intuition
for a day or even just an afternoon. When they
arrive, assign them to seats at small “team” circles.
• Each person needs a marker and two stacks of
medium-sized Post-it notes in two different colors,
one stack of large (5x8) Post-its, and a clipboard.
 Offer tours
• Kick off the event by asking your guests to tour the
art gallery. Depending on their familiarity with the
process, you may need to spend some time (but
not too much) moving around the room explaining
briefly what each visual describes.
 Pick out the good stuff
• Ask attendees to browse individually (without
talking to one another) and note (on separate
medium-sized Post-it notes) any learnings that he
or she believes should inform new ideas. Each
person will probably generate 20 to 30 of these.
• If important data are missing from the gallery,
attendees can add their own, but on different
colored Post-it notes. (Have teams start in different
places around the room and ask everyone to write
in large box letters.)
 Cluster the good stuff
• Have attendees return to their circles and spend five
minutes privately sorting through their Post-its and
clustering them into themes, using their clipboards.
After completing this, each team should work as a
group to cluster members' combined Post-its into
shared patterns and themes on a large foam-core
board.
• We suggest the following approach: One individual
offers a theme that seems significant and attaches his
or her relevant Post-it notes to the board. The other
team members then add to that cluster their own
relevant notes.
 Cluster the good stuff (Cont’d)
• A second person then offers another theme. The
process is repeated as before, with participants
adding to this second cluster their own related
Post-its. The group continues in this way until all
major themes have been gathered on the board.
• At the conclusion, any Post-it notes that have not
been assigned to a theme are posted in the margins
as “outliers.” Pay attention to these: Just because a
piece of information doesn't fit into a cluster
doesn't mean that it isn't important.
 Identify the insights
• Identify the insights related to each cluster and
look for connections between clusters. Ask the
teams to step back and try to identify what insights
arise from each cluster. These should be written on
the large Post-its and posted on top of the relevant
cluster. Teams should then look for relationships
between the clusters.
 Design Criteria
• Translate insights and connections into design
criteria. Pose the question, “Based on what you
have learned, if anything were possible our design
would…” Capture these criteria on a flip chart, one
per team.
• Create a common criteria list. Have the teams
browse one another's charts, discuss the criteria,
and work together as a large group to create a
“master list” of the criteria an ideal design would
meet.
 Design Criteria
• The design criteria Project Management Aid (PMA) is a
succinct expression of the ideal end state of your
growth project. It captures your conclusions from the
What is stage and provides the yardstick by which
possible solutions will be evaluated. Notice that the
design criteria do not tell you what to make or how to
make it; instead, they describe the attributes of an
ideal solution. They are a concise list of relevant
constraints and aspirations for the solution.
• In this, they represent an extension of the design brief,
including information you lacked at the start of the
process.
 When to use Design Criteria
• You develop design criteria at the bridge between
What is and What if. They are often communicated
to the executive sponsor and other stakeholders as
an indicator of the progress and direction of the
growth project.
 Design Criteria and de-risking
• During What is, you glean new insights from many
sources. As a result, growth projects can suffer
from information overload. The design criteria
distill the incoming data, separate the signal from
the noise, and tell you what you truly believe about
the ideal solution.
• Projects that cannot generate concise design
criteria become rudderless ships, floating in a sea
of data and never arriving at terra firma.