More than XP. More than one day.

The world is full of ideas. Millions of ideas are given birth every day and millions are killed just as quickly, usually before they have had a chance to make a lasting effect on our world. But some ideas do “stick” as they say. What makes those ideas successful and how can I make my idea stick? That’s a question I believe many proponents of Agile methods have asked and would like an answer. I’ve created this workshop to help the participants find an answer.

The foundations for the workshop are based on two simple acronyms coined by Guy Kawasaki and brothers named Chip and Dan Heath. Guy Kawasaki is an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and possibly best known for his book on the startup business, Art of the Start. Guy’s biggest influence on me, however, has been the DICEE–a mnemonic for the properties of a great product. Similarly, Chip and Dan Heath hit the jackpot with their recent best-seller, Made to Stick, where they introduce the mnemonic SUCCES for describing the properties of a successful idea.

In the workshop, we experiment with putting these corny mnemonics to practice in an attempt at selling exceptional ideas to exceptional audiences.

Agenda

The outline of the workshop is divided into three phases that I have decided to call preparation, development, and deployment, each lasting 15 minutes.

In the Preparation phase, the organizer first introduces the workshop’s goal and agenda and the participants organize into four groups. The Preparation phase ends with the organizer giving a short introduction to DICEE and SUCCES.

Having an understanding of the foundations for the upcoming exercise, the groups move to the Development phase. First, the groups randomly pick an idea to sell and a persona to sell the idea to. The ideas and personas have been prepared in advance by the organizer and do not relate to software development to help participants step out of the box. Having an idea and someone to sell it to, each group proceeds to creating a one-minute presentation that will convince their persona about the idea, exploiting as much of DICEE and SUCCES as possible. The presentation’s length is limited in order to keep the workshop duration short but also to emphasize focus on DICEE and SUCCES.

In the third and final phase, Deployment, the groups give their one-minute presentations to the whole group one at a time, followed by feedback and discussion about the way the groups had decided to sell their ideas to their personas.