Rooster

Do a Roadmap World Café

26 Jan 2025 - Michael Voorhaen

Welcome back to my series on actionable experiments you can try as a Product Owner to boost your dev team’s productivity, alignment, and innovation. Each post offers practical strategies to rethink how your team handles their workload and priorities.

The Need for Transparency

As a Product Owner, keeping everyone aligned on your backlog and roadmap is crucial. Transparency helps your team and stakeholders understand what’s happening and why, building trust and ensuring everyone works toward the same goals.

Wee often rely on roadmap presentations, backlog tools like Jira or Trello, and regular stakeholder meetings to keep everyone informed. These methods work, but they can be a lot of work, often falling on us to manage. Preparing slides, updating tools, scheduling meetings—it all adds up. Wouldn’t it be great to have a more collaborative and less time-consuming way to keep things transparent?

Enter the World Café

That’s where the World Café comes in. This technique, similar to the Conversation Café from the Liberating Structures toolkit, shifts the focus from you doing all the heavy lifting to a more collaborative approach. In a World Café, your team and stakeholders come together to discuss the roadmap in small, rotating group conversations. It taps into the collective wisdom of the group, recognizing that you’re not the only one with valuable insights. Plus, it makes the process more engaging and less of a solo effort.

Who Should You Invite?

It depends on your goals. I usually run a World Café with different groups, each time with a different focus:

• Stakeholders, Customers, and Key Developers: Use this mix to align on backlog priorities. It’s a great way to kickstart the day by getting everyone on the same page. This setup often works best as part of a larger workshop.
• Development Team Deep Dive: With the development team, you can dig into the technical details and feasibility of the roadmap. It’s also a great opportunity to spot any risks that might not have been obvious before. This session is perfect for the first backlog refinement after major changes.

The big advantage here is that knowledge from one session carries over to the next, making discussions more informed and productive. If involving customers is tricky, start with stakeholders, or even just the development team.

Organizing Your World Café Session

When setting up a World Café, I usually prepare posters in advance to guide discussions. Here’s a setup that works well:

• What did we finish last quarter? (Optional, but great for celebrating wins.)
• What are we working on now?
• Which topics will we pick up next quarter?
• Which topics follow after that?

The number of posters depends on your group size. For 15 to 25 people, 3 to 4 posters work well. Each poster should spark a different discussion. For example, the “What are we working on now?” poster could focus on what’s left to do, identifying risks, or questioning if the current plan still makes sense. Group topics together as you look further into the future since people will need more details to discuss meaningfully.

On each poster, list key features or goals with just enough detail to start the conversation. Include some example questions to trigger discussions, but keep it simple—you want participants to think critically and add details themselves.

Setting Up the Room

Depending on your company culture, you might need to get creative with the space. If your regular meeting room isn’t flexible enough, try re-arranging it to allow for easy movement and discussion. If that’s not possible, think outside the box: use the break-room, lobby, or even take the session outside if the weather is nice. The key is to create an environment that encourages collaboration, with posters or flip charts on the walls and plenty of space for participants to gather comfortably. Snacks and coffee can also help keep energy levels high and make the session more productive.

What Materials Do You Need?

To run a successful World Café session, you’ll need:

• Large Posters or Flip Charts: Big enough for participants to write on and read easily.
• Markers: Lots of colors to encourage contributions and make notes stand out.
• Sticky Notes: For quick thoughts, questions, or grouping ideas.
• Printed Handouts: Example questions or prompts to guide discussions.
• Tape: For hanging posters around the room.
• Snacks and Coffee: To keep energy levels up and create a welcoming environment.

What to Expect During the Session

Expect a dynamic and interactive environment where participants actively engage in discussions around the posters. But be prepared—it might feel a bit daunting at first for some participants. As the Product Owner, be ready to help kickstart discussions and remind everyone that any information is valuable. Even lack of information, so remind people to write down questions.

Avoid adding too much pressure by constantly reminding them of the time, but give a nudge when they’re halfway through. In my experience, at least one group usually gets the ball rolling, and the time constraint pushes people to get more creative and engaged as the session progresses.

At the end of the session, I leave some time for people to revisit each poster and add any final thoughts.

Practical Tips and Tweaks

• Create Diverse Groups: Mix everyone up before starting to get a wide range of perspectives.
• Experiment with Poster Hosts: Consider leaving one or two people at each poster from the previous session to maintain continuity, though this means some participants might not see everything.
• Plan for a Closing Discussion: Set aside time at the end to address any important open questions and to synthesize insights.
• Encourage Visual Note-Taking: Have participants write, doodle, or draw directly on posters to make the session more engaging and capture ideas visually.

Gathering Feedback: The Perfection Game

To wrap up your World Café session, gather valuable feedback using the Perfection Game. This simple yet effective technique lets participants rate the session on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being perfect. After giving their score, they should explain what would have made the session a perfect 10 for them. This method not only helps you understand what worked well but also provides specific suggestions for improvement. It’s a positive and structured way to gather insights, ensuring that each session you run gets better and better.

Getting Started

Ready to try it out? Here’s a quick guide:

1. Choose Your Audience: Decide who to involve—stakeholders, customers, the dev team, or a mix—and tailor the session’s goals to match.
2. Prepare Your Materials: Get your posters, markers, sticky notes, and other materials ready. Plan the key discussion topics and create posters to guide conversations.
3. Set the Scene: Organize the room for easy movement between posters. Ensure the environment is welcoming, with snacks and coffee available.
4. Kickstart with an Icebreaker: Use the collective experience icebreaker to set a collaborative tone from the start.
5. Facilitate the Discussions: Move around to keep conversations flowing. Remind participants that every piece of information is valuable, and be ready to nudge discussions if needed.
6. Wrap Up and Gather Feedback: Plan a closing discussion to resolve any open questions. Then, use the Perfection Game to gather feedback and refine future sessions.

Getting started with a World Café session doesn’t have to take a lot of time. With just 2 to 3 hours of prep, you can be well on your way, especially if you’re focusing on your dev team.

Conclusion

Running a World Café session brings together more diverse perspectives than a typical presentation, fostering deeper insights and shared ownership of the product roadmap or backlog. This approach not only enhances transparency but also creates a collaborative environment where everyone feels invested in the product’s direction. By involving different voices in the discussion, you build a stronger, more unified team, aligned around a collective vision. Give it a try—you might find it’s the key to unlocking greater engagement and innovation within your team.