www.powernoodle.com

Accelerating Business Analysis Focus Groups

This Powernoodle Solution was developed with the help of Powernoodle Expert: Larry Simon

Larry Simon and his company the Inflection Group provide business analysis, IT management advisory, e-business and enterprise architecture services to a broad range of companies, public sector organizations and early stage businesses.

 

Before founding the Inflection Group, Larry was a senior partner at Ernst & Young Canada Consulting where he had national responsibility for E&Y’s facilitation and solution delivery centres. While at E&Y he also served as the firm’s Chief Methodologist and Chief Information Officer. He was also previously the Head Judge of the Canadian Information Productivity Awards and on the faculty of the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. He has over 2,000 classroom hours of experience teaching IT strategy, business analysis, project management, TOGAF and IASA Foundation courses.

He is currently on the Ontario Board of CIPS (Canada’s association of IT professionals) and is the IT Infrastructure and Cloud Computing research lead for IT Market Dynamics.

Connect with Larryon LinkedIn:http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/larry-simon/0/147/26

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Powernoodle sessions help you bridge the gulf between business people’s understanding of their business and the specialist knowledge of IT people.

Using Powernoodle, groups quickly and respectfully make decisions that everyone understands, supports and is willing to implement.

Powernoodle is an Accelerator for Business Analysis.

This guide will provide you with clear guidance on how to organize and facilitate focus groups using Powernoodle.

You will learn how to:

Accelerate involvement by stakeholders.

Produce better, more valuable outcomes by including more stakeholders and building consensus as you go.

Incorporating Powernoodle

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Intuitive Design and Familiar Process

Brainstorm Categorize Vote

RatePrioritizeAction Plan

Download Spreadsheet

Report

You can customize every Powernoodle session to generate the outcome you need.

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Using this Guide:

Each step in designing and managing focus groups can be done using Powernoodle. As a result, you will have a richer, more comprehensive outcome report.

This guide is designed for an Organizer and discusses some features of Powernoodle that are available only to the Organizer.

This guide also contains information about the role of Participants in a Powernoodle session.

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It Starts with the Right Question.

Looking for more detailed directions? Watch the Organizer Training Series

videos www.powernoodle.com

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You will be able to involve more people at key points in the process, regardless of their geographic location.

You will benefit from feedback that is:

ConvenientCandidConfidential More DiverseEfficient

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Question: What is your Favourite TV show from the following list.

Participants enter a sticky note for each TV show in your list.

Powernoodle Illustration

IDEA: 1

Modern Family

IDEA: 4

Two and a Half Men

(Kuchar)

IDEA: 5

The Office(with

Carrell)

IDEA: 2

Big Bang Theory

IDEA: 3

Two and a Half Men

(Sheen)

IDEA: 6

The Office(w/o

Carrell)

Rating: Everyone rates each show based on 3 weighed criteria

WAYS TO FILTER IDEAS

Voting

Single Criteria Rating (one rating scale)

Multi-Criteria Rating(weighted scales)

Prioritize

ROLE OF QUESTIONS

Powernoodle is question-centric

Value of outcome is driven by how the question is worded

Desired Outcome: A series of high-value focus groups.

As the Organizer, you will guide your group in using Powernoodle to:

Propose and select participants for a focus group Propose topics for a focus group Select topics from those proposed Gather issues to focus on at the focus group session Develop open and closed questions for the session Gathering new or changed requirements during the session Gather comments and reactions during the session and report

on them

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Improve the way you manage your focus groups using Powernoodle.

1. Propose and select participants for a focus group: invite Participants to suggest individuals or groups in Brainstorm, then Vote and Prioritise to develop a final list.

2. Propose topics for a focus group: invite Participants to suggest topics in Brainstorm, then Vote and Prioritise to develop a final list.

3. Gather issues to focus on at the focus group session: Enter the topics as ideas in Brainstorm, invite Participants to identify related issues in the Comments.

4. Develop open and closed questions for the session: Invite Participants to submit questions in Brainstorm, Categorise as ‘Open ‘ or ‘Closed’ questions, then Rate the questions.

5. Gather comments and reactions during the session and report on them: Create a Powernoodle Question for each open or closed question, invite Participants to respond in Brainstorm, then vote on the most important ideas.

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The Report is created automatically after your session ends, saving hours of transcription and interpretation.

It is available in Excel spreadsheet format for you and your participants.

It captures every discussion thread for future reference and action.

Saving Time with the Powernoodle Report.

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For detailed examples and directions, you can:

Watch the Powernoodle Organizer Training Series videos.

Log in and visit the Help section.

Contact us at support@powernoodle.com.

Join the Powernoodle user groups online.

Powernoodle Help and Support

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www.powernoodle.com

To purchase a Powernoodle plan, please visit our website.

Website: http://www.inflectiongroup.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LarryASimon Join Larry in the Powernoodle Group on LinkedIn.com

Powernoodle Template: Accelerating Business Analysis Focus Groups by Larry Simon and Powernoodle Inc is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at http://

www.inflectiongroup,com and www.powernoodle.com.

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