Remember the Future: find ways to improve your project by travelling in time

Original and collaborative project tracking to be more cautious and effective

Inspired by agile project management methods, this Back to the Future workshop helps the team improve, make the best possible choices and get an overview of past or future projects, by anticipating obstacles.

As a team, remember what your last project was like. Then, project yourself into your next project and ask questions about yourself in the future. Finally, learn from your trip and create your action plan together.

This workshop can be used between two sprints in a project tracking Scrum. It will be just as useful to launch the new stage of a long-term project as for a quick project to be carried out in a few weeks. With the Back to the Future template, you can capitalize on what has worked well and less well in the past, and learn lessons for the future.

Use your experience, anticipate and improve your project management methodology

“Back to the Future” is an original workshop that improves the way a team works in the run up to the launch of a new project or a new sprint in a project tracking Scrum.

Using time travel, the team takes stock of what has worked well or less well in the past and with respect to its current practices, and then projects itself into future successes, so as to identify ways of being more effective today.

Whether you continue your project with the same team or integrate new people, the Back to the Future template will help to bond the team together based on your common experience. Working face-to-face or working from home, all the members will benefit from the same level of information and will know the potential pitfalls to avoid, as well as everyone's strengths. You will build a real feeling of group cohesion and aiming to protect the team and the project!

Travel through time with the Klaxoon template

To conduct a Back to the Future workshop with your team, invite your employees to join your whiteboard, and start by entering the project name and date. Encourage the team members to post a photo with their name in the designated location, for a friendlier meeting and a personalized Board.

Now it’s time to travel back in time! Each team member must delve into their memories to indicate, using the suggested key, what has worked well and what has worked less well during the last project or project sprint. Discuss this as a team to choose what you will note in the “What we keep” box. This will be useful for the action plan.

Now, it's time to travel into the future; i.e. time for the team to imagine itself at the moment when the project is finished. Everyone asks a team member a Question, stating their name in Dimensions. The person concerned answers with an idea of a different color and connects it to their Question.

You can now move on to the project management itself, using the lessons learned from the journey into the past to fill in the “To do” area. Remember to note who is responsible for each action and a deadline in Dimensions. Use the journey into the future to review and categorize the risks. The Klaxoon template has four categories but you can of course modify them in the Board’s options.

Any time, you can intensify your project tracking by quickly engaging your team on a specific point, using the Question tool. Everyone will be able to respond on the whiteboard and you will be able to move forward as a team by making truly collaborative decisions.