Workshop Design

"None of us is as smart as all of us." — Ken Blanchard

TL;DR

Designs structured collaborative workshops — event storming, impact mapping, design sprints, and inception sessions — with detailed agendas, facilitation scripts, and artifact templates. Use this skill when you need to align a group, explore a domain, or make collaborative decisions efficiently.

Procedure

Step 1: Discover

• Define the workshop objective: what decision or artifact should result
• Identify participants: roles, number, experience level, remote/in-person
• Assess constraints: duration, tools available (Miro, FigJam, physical), preparation time

Step 2: Analyze

• Select the appropriate workshop format for the objective:
  • Event Storming: domain exploration and process discovery
  • Impact Mapping: goal → actors → impacts → deliverables alignment
  • Design Sprint: rapid prototyping and validation (5-day or compressed)
  • Inception: project kickoff with scope, risks, and team agreements
• Design the agenda with timeboxed activities and energy management

Step 3: Execute

• Produce a detailed facilitation guide with timing, instructions, and transitions
• Create artifact templates (Miro boards, canvases, voting sheets)
• Write pre-workshop preparation instructions for participants
• Design warm-up activities and energizers appropriate to the group

Step 4: Validate

• Verify the agenda achieves the stated objective within time constraints
• Confirm activities are appropriate for participant experience level
• Check that remote participants have equal participation opportunity
• Validate that outputs feed directly into downstream deliverables

Quality Criteria

• Workshop objective is specific and measurable
• Agenda is timeboxed with buffer for overruns
• Facilitation guide includes transition scripts and contingency activities
• Artifact templates are prepared and tested
• Evidence tags applied to all claims

Anti-Patterns

• Death by sticky notes: activities without clear synthesis steps
• Workshop without follow-up: insights generated but never actioned
• Facilitator-as-participant: trying to contribute content while facilitating

Related Skills

• domain-driven-design — event storming is a DDD discovery technique
• stakeholder-mapping — identifies who should participate
• flow-mapping — captures process flows discovered during workshops