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| [Image by meineresterampe from Pixabay.com] |
Today's meditation: On the value of "Wall Walks"
A
Wall Walk - is a technique for breaking siloed thinking, for
encouraging innovation, for identifying dependencies & risks, and
for encouraging open communication & collaboration.
It is a
periodic meeting (quarterly usually feels like a good cadence - however,
during periods of rapid change - monthly may be appropriate), that
pulls together participants from all of the disciplines across a company
- and each area is given [n] minutes to give a brief talk, with a
question & answer session following.
What makes the Wall
Walk *fundamentally* different from almost every other presentation you
will see in any company - is that it isn't intended as an opportunity
for the team to proclaim their glorious achievements - or show how many
areas they are reporting as GREEN to management (when in reality, we all
know, some of them are actually RED).
The goal for a Wall Walk talk should be to cover:
- What we recently delivered
- What we we are working on - and how it may impact the rest of you
- Experiments we've tried - what worked - and what didn't
- *Challenges* we are struggling with - would love to have follow-ups to hear your ideas
- Future planned work - in areas in which we know (or believe) that there will be dependencies that impact you.
To implement Wall Walks requires courage - and a willingness to tell the unvarnished truth.
Other variations on the concept of Wall Walks:
- https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/contextual-design-2nd/9780128011362/XHTML/B9780128008942000107/B9780128008942000107.xhtml
- https://medium.com/@armypublicaffairscenter/wall-walk-yourself-and-your-team-to-better-briefings-and-papers-ad744733642
- https://carolmassa.medium.com/walking-the-creative-wall-focus-on-the-outcome-not-the-deliverable-d0f8a4ac5cb
- https://miro.com/miroverse/walk-the-wall-user-story-review/
