Project managers have to deal with different types of people in any activities and it is the role of the project manager to initiate communication to get ideas from his or her team members. Team members suggesting something related to a particular idea or concept is very much welcome in Project Management. This is the reason why it is so important to use group creativity techniques.
Group creativity techniques are used to generate ideas within a group of people or stakeholders. There are different activities that project managers can organize to identify ideas for the project to meet the requirements. Below mentioned are the different types of techniques that can enhance creativity and decision-making within the group.
Group Creativity Techniques
When asked the question about providing ideas for project requirements, no one exactly knows where to start. However if the project manager asks about specific rather than abstract concepts, the team members are much more likely to contribute to something that relates to a particular area of requirements. This process is called as ‘Group Creativity Technique.’
Group Creativity Techniques in Project Management
The critical feature of the group creativity technique is that it allows the project manager to collect new ideas and concepts from the team members by initiating proper communication. It’s a technique that is used to generate ideas within a group of stakeholders because the stakeholders are the decision-makers when it comes to finalizing the deliverables of a product.
Methods for Effective Creativity Techniques
The techniques used for enhancing the creativity of the groups:
Brainstorming
It is a group creativity technique in which members are allowed to generate as many ideas/requirements as possible without criticism. The brainstorming technique does not prioritize the ideas. In this technique, the participants are safe to present their very own creative ideas even though some ideas are unrealistic. During the process, all the generated ideas/requirements are recorded without any assessments. Additionally, a productive brainstorming session triggers one idea from another, enabling the team members to spot the connections between the ideas. It is important to note that this type of synergy is not found during one-to-one sessions.
The Nominal Group Technique
It is a technique for small group discussion in which ideas and requirements are ranked and prioritized by all the team members of the group after generating the list of requirements. It enhances the brainstorming with a voting process that is used to rank the most useful ideas for further prioritization. This technique prevents the domination of a single person over the discussion by allowing the voices of all members to be represented. The project manager should ask the team to rate each idea under a particular heading for providing a better result. All the requirements that are generated or chosen should be testable and measurable.
Mind Mapping
It is used through individual sessions with each team member. The project manager then consolidates the ideas into a single map to create a common ground of understanding. A technique that starts with the idea of the project in the middle, and then stakeholders branch out from the central idea and generate more requirements. This process will provide an overview of the project, which will allow the project manager to determine if there is an imbalance in the requirements or whether one set of needs was weighted more heavily than others.
Affinity Diagram
It takes ideas and groups them into categories with similar ideas or requirements. Thus, they are arranged with ideas that they have an “affinity” (similarities) with. It is a technique used to classify a large number of ideas for analysis or review. Affinity diagrams can either be used alone or in conjunction with brainstorming and the nominal group techniques as well.
Multi-criteria Decision Analysis
When the process of gathering requirements is taking place, the project manager often needs to balance several criteria to determine the best set of requirements for a product. Multi-criteria decision analysis identifies the various measures that the project manager will use to evaluate requirements and then assigns a high-level value to each criterion like risk levels, uncertainty, and valuation, to assess and rank many ideas.
Conclusion
The collective collaboration of the individuals adds value to the end product and eventually leads to customer satisfaction. When the requirement is met with high efficiency and coordination amongst the group, the group creativity techniques prove to be one of the best practices a project manager can use to keep the group motivated.
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