Index cards as a collaboration tool

I spent most of my time at Agile2006 (when I wasn’t leading sessions) sitting in the front lobby chatting with people. One of those people was Jim Shore, who showed me his new on-line collaboration tool (developed with Dave Woldrich, cardmeeting.com.

I find that working with cards to generate ideas and solve problems hugely valuable when I work with groups.

Here’s one of the ways I work with cards:

I ask people to write down at least 10 ideas related to the issue at hand. I ask for 10 because the first several ideas people come up with represent habitual thinking. Pushing for 10 ideas sparks creativity. Usually I have them list the ideas on scrap paper, then transfer their X best ideas to cards. X is determined by the total number of ideas cards I want to work with. I’ve found that 35 is a good number. More is overwhelming to work with, fewer doesn’t allow for rich discussion.

Then I help the group cluster the cards and name the clusters. (I usually do this a specific way that I learned from the ICA folks, which they call the Workshop Method. There’s more to it than I’m going to go into here.)

Several interesting happens when I do this.

Because people are looking at the cards “out there” they’re less likely to get into arguments about ideas. They focus on seeing how the different ideas fit together. Seeing different ideas juxtaposed seems to spark different thinking, too.

Because everyone has offered many ideas, people don’t get as attached to a specific idea as they do when they only have one idea.

As the clustering is going on, people have conversations about why they see something in one group rather than another, and begin to understand other peoples ideas.

People generally leave the process with “our” ideas rather than feeling like the ideas of an individual or a few people favored people won out.

And when people believe it’s “our idea” they’re much more likely to commit to it.

I used this process with anywhere from 5 to 50 people. And it works great—when people are in the same room.

So back to cardmeeting.com.

Cardmeeting.com keeps the physical index card metaphor and allows users to move the cards around, cluster them, add new cards, and add title cards. So you can have people in different locations participating joint problem-solving and thinking together in an active, dynamic way. Add in a VOIP connection, and people could have conversations as they move the cards. I think with a judicious use of group rules, you could have a facilitator help with the clustering, too.

I know there are various web meeting tools and shared desk top programs. This feels like a higher level of collaboration for people thinking together than the ones I have seen up until now.

Jim let me test drive –I am excited to try cardmeeting.com on a real problem. I’ll report back when I do.