Welcome To Shrinkonia. : About.

This is a list of the exercises described on The Project Shrink.

They are Shrinkonian Exercises. Storytelling. Play. Maps. Hurray!

The Story Of Quest.

The reason why your project exists, is because it has to fulfill a goal, create an end result. In Shrinkonian lingo that is The Quest, the pursuit of something worthwhile. The goal of your project or organization is a powerful mechanism for alignment. Everyone is working towards the same result. But first you have to make sure they all have the same understanding of what “done” looks like. That is the purpose of this exercise.

Adventure Maps.

In this exercise we use the power of storytelling to interactively create a cunning plan. Although, now it’s called an Adventure Map. Every project is a journey. It is never a straight line. You have to conquer obstacles, replan, regroup, rethink and change course. Imagine your project as a map through unknown territory in search for The Goal. The map reflects the storyline of the project. The episodes of the project life cycle. The glory days of starting the project. The period in which the project was under attack by vicious stakeholders.

Yellow Brick Road.

The trip along the Yellow Brick Road from the Wizard Of Oz is long. Just like your project. With a lot of turns and twists. And mountains that block your view. From where you are standing you cannot see the end. How do you know you’re on the right track. You don’t want to travel a long distance to notice in the end that you went the wrong way. And people tend to get nervous when they have no idea of how far they are. Like stakeholders in a project. In this exercise you align the perception the stakeholders have of your journey.

Stakeholder Maps.

The normal Adventure Map has a focus on events, the Stakeholder Adventure Map does focus on, you’ve guessed it, stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis is a technique to identify and analyze the stakeholders surrounding a project. It provides information on stakeholders and their relationships and expectations. A proper analysis of the stakeholders will help you to construct a project approach suited to the situation and will allow you to negotiate better with the stakeholders.

The Project Story Circle.

What do you draw when you are visualizing a project on a whiteboard? I draw an arrow from left to right that represents a timeline. Not always. But many times. The way you visualize, determines your focus. I’ve been playing with the simple but powerful concept of a Project Story Circle. The project is represented by a circular arrow and is divided in half with a horizontal line. The idea behind it is the following:

• An organization has the need for something. A challenge has to be conquered. A group of people starts a journey and brings back their result to the organization.
• The upper half of the circle represents time spent outside the project. Preparing for the voyage. And getting the results back to the place where it is needed.
• The bottom half makes up for project time.
• This will focus attention on the transitions organization-project and project-organization.
• This will focus attention on the idea that you undertake the project long before the actual project starts and that it only ends when you have gone full circle; when the actual benefits are realized.

Hurricane Maps.

This is an awareness exercise. Getting people into an “uncertainty” mindset. When the path of hurricanes is predicted, maps are used that show us the areas that might be hit. The further away in the future, the larger the potential area is. The weather forecasts get more uncertain if we go from one day, three day to weekly forecasts.

Signpost Maps.

Every project road has forks in them. Points where you can go left or right. Points where you have to go left or right. Some things you have to decide early on, some things can be decided almost at the end of the journey. It is important to focus the attention of team members and stakeholders on these decisive moments. Focus attention on the signpost on the road of your Big Adventure.

Map Of You. Personal Journey.

A project is a small episode in the personal journey of many individuals. Viewing what you do today in the context of a larger path will help you explore your relationship with the current project. Why do you do what you do? Why do you want to do things in the first place? This exercise, The Map Of You, also addresses the relationships with your team members. They get a little more about your background.

The Organizational Journey.

Why is your project taking place right now? And not last year, or next year? Are there also any other projects taking place now? Why? What is the challenge? These questions matter. By exploring the relationship of the project and The Organizational Journey, you and your team create awareness around why you doing things. Awareness beyond the normal “build this” specification. A sense of why you are doing what you are doing. This will help the team to make decisions that fulfill the organizations desires and be more in tune with its context.

This Brave New World.

When you conduct a project within a larger organization (the host organization) you might feel like an explorer at first. Like the famous explorers from the old days, you can follow two strategies on arrival: mix with the locals or directly plant your flag. In this exercise you focus on your strategy when arriving for the first time in the organization for an intervention.

The Travel Guide To Your Organization.

In this exercise you create a The Travel Guide To … [your organization]. A travel guide contains The Story of the company. It contains the essence of its culture. Creating The Travel Guide is an awesome exercise for any one planning a change in an organization. It assists storytelling and the discovery of culture. By playing with the elements of the culture from the organization and discovering our own relationship with them, the group culture emerges.

Shockwave / Legacy.

A project has its own culture. This culture can be very different from the organization it is operating in. How do you make sure the project culture isn’t crushed by the larger organizations’ culture? And how do you make sure that project team members are still welcome in the organization when the project is done? That is the focus of this exercise.

The Tent.

Your ragtag crew needs some kind of protection. If you’re on A Big Adventure you need a support structure. Projects create change. Change makes waves through the organization. And change creates stress for people. Your project is a temporary structure within the host organization. In this exercise you discuss with the group how the ideal tent would look like. What kind of material? What information can get out, or what information should stay in the tent? What would you pack? How do you make sure you can get along on a small confined space for a period of time?

The Vehicle.

This is an awesome exercise to create a shared vision and approach within your team, suggested to me by Kimberly Wiefling.

“… I sometimes ask a team to imagine that they are a vehicle on a journey, and to silently draw that vehicle and that journey as they perceive it . . . all team members drawing on one piece of paper together in silence. It’s interesting, and often amusing, what comes out of this exercise – snake pits, volcanoes, “Road out”".

What Does Your Swing Look Like?

Different expectations of the end result among stakeholders and project team members can be a huge problem in projects. There is even a famous cartoon about this: it is about the customer expecting a swing on a tree, and all the different interpretations of it by others. If your project is suffering from something similar, you can use this cartoon as an exercise to raise awareness and discuss the different expectations in a non-threatening way.