Pre event - Do you know how to farm Brainstorming ideas?

Beginning a Brainstorming Day without ideas prepared in advance is not a recipe for success. Time will be wasted either coming up with ideas, or preparing them to work on.

For a successful and streamlined Brainstorming Day, it's crucial to gather well-formed ideas in advance. This preparation smoothens the day's proceedings and increases its overall value.

GitHub Discussions provides an awesome way to let employees discuss ideas before the Brainstorming day. A GitHub Discussion template makes it easy for attendees to submit quality ideas in a consistent format.

For a successful and streamlined Brainstorming Day, it's crucial to gather well-formed ideas in advance. This preparation not only smoothens the day's proceedings but also enhances its overall value.

To ensure you get high-quality ideas, create a structured template for the Discussion.

One month before brainstorming, you should review the repo and then remind all attendees to submit a Discussion with their ideas:

1. Look at all existing ideas in the Brainstorming GitHub Discussions repo

• Great minds think alike and if you had an idea it's possible somebody else has had it as well. You may even find an idea you like and decide to reach out to the author to collaborate.
• If necessary, call the person who came up with the idea and ask for further explanation or for them to record a Done Video to sell their idea.

2. Pre-cooking - Come up with a few ideas for the day

• These ideas should come from high-level people in the company.

3. Send out an email asking people to submit any new ideas they have

• The email should have a short explanation of the day, some previous success stories, and a link to all the GitHub discussions.

4. Have a Backlog Refinement Meeting

• The Goal of this meeting is to make sure the ideas are ready to be allocated to teams.
• This process only requires a small group, however they are free to call in relevant people as required.