It’s now time to arrange for a workshop, and have the internal team members plan for improvements based on the results of the evaluation. You should use proper facilitation techniques to avoid biases, and get the best result. Also remember that the plans created this way are superior to those created by a single person or a few people, because:

• A large group of team members bring a lot of practical information and a variety of viewpoints, that has the potential of generating great ideas (if facilitated properly).
• When the team members plan the improvements, you will have their buy-in, and chances are higher that the plan will be realized in the next cycle.

The plan will be saved in the Project Health, and will be monitored by the Project Manager.

You should facilitate such a workshop properly to enable The Wisdom of Crowds, instead of Groupthink.

An example of how you can facilitate the workshop:

1. Invite everyone to the same place.
2. Make sure there’s enough space for all people, and they are positioned equally.
3. Explain to them that it’s a democratic decision that will be respected by the whole organization.
4. Ask them to write down all process-based problems they can think of.
5. Gather the items, and summarize them in one list. Don’t remove any items, but combine similar ones. When you combine multiple items into one, try to do it in a way that everyone can recognize their items in the summary. When required, shorten the items.
6. Show the list on a screen, or give them a printed version, and ask them to write down new items if they can think of any.
7. Summarize the list again.
8. Give the list to the people and ask them to select the three most important ones.
9. Count the votes, and prioritize the list.
10. Select one to three items from the top, to be planned. Select fewer, when the improvement needs more effort.
11. Ask everyone to write down their ideas on how to improve the selected problems.
12. Collect and summarize the ideas.
13. Give them the summary, and ask to come up with new ideas.
14. Collect and summarize the new ideas.
15. Give them the full list of ideas, and ask them to vote.
16. Count the votes, and select the most popular ideas.
17. Announce the selected ideas for improvement.

All steps above are done anonymously.

It’s faster and easier if you use a proper software for collecting ideas and voting, especially when there are more than 20 people in the workshop.