Whether you're starting a new project, launching or running a program, or doing strategic planning for an organization, understanding where your work sits within the broader ecosystem you, your competitors and collaborators are serving is imperative. This planning tool is designed to help teams get started in understanding their value proposition, competitive advantage and opportunities through brainstorming and distillation. This exercise is designed to start with a look from the inside out -- beginning with the idea you're looking to build out or support.
GOAL: Mapping your program's key offerings and peers is a way to focus your idea and look at possible opportunities, related work, and blindspots that may otherwise not be apparent. It's also a way to practice clearly articulating what your key value proposition is, which often highlights elements of tension or confusion that may need rethinking, or need to be pared down. The exercise below will help guide you through crafting a project description, as well as highlight areas that may need more work. For the questions below, feel free to use bullet points, and try to be as clear and concise as you can. The word counts are listed as guides - don't worry if you go over or under by a few.
FORMAT: Solo brainstorming exercise. Use the time allotted as you see fit, and try your best to stay within the word limits. Feel free to use bullet points for some of the longer sections, and add links or pointers where relevant.
TECHNOLOGY: Your favorite text editor or program to write in, a whiteboard (or paper to scribble on) if conducting live, and a timer. (Feeling distracted? Try Focus Writer or one of these tools - many have word counts baked in.
TIME: 2.5-3 hours.
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Free-write for 6 minutes; then refine your answer for 5 minutes.
What change do you want to see as a result of this project? Give us a sense of the context in which this project exists. Main items to include: what is the problem, help needed, and desired outcome. Note: This should be a high-level description (not a full-project roadmap), and written so that a lay-person can understand.
Note: This is a two-part exercise. Give yourself the full-time allotted for this section, and feel free to go above the time limits listed if you need.
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Research (1 hour - 50 words): What is the major related work in this field relevant to your problem area? List 5-10 most noteworthy projects addressing the same subjects, issues, or problems, and add a short (1-3 line) summary and/or a link.
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Summary (30 minutes - 250 words): Now, refine what you've found, and spend the next 30 minutes working to answer the questions below. This summary should include references to important publications or results of other significant efforts in the field. The proposer should describe how his or her work differs from, contributes to, or complements this work.
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Some questions to get you started:
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What was the last big thing to happen on this topic?
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Who else is trying to tackle this problem (or one close to it)?
- List groups, individuals, orgs
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How are they approaching the problem?
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Have they made progress? Why / why not? What roadblocks may exist?
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Does your approach differ from or complement their work?
- How so?
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Is there an opportunity for collaboration or contribution? If not, why?
*Spend 20-30 minutes sketching out (on paper or a whiteboard) various ways to address your the problem listed in your "General Idea" answer above. (It's OK to go back and refine that, too!). At the end of that brainstorm, spend the next 30 minutes filling in the sections below, paying mind to the word count and flow of the idea. Feel free to work through these questions for various solutions.
- Idea summary (25 words):
- Who is the audience? (25 words):
- What you're testing (25 words):
- Your approach and how it's different (100 words):
- What other work / people / orgs is this work dependent on? (25 words):
- How will this project be disseminated, delivered or distributed to the community? (25 words):
- What are other use cases for this project (outside your field, broadening your audience within your field) (50 words):
- Opportunities for collaboration (25 words):
Free-write for 6 minutes; then refine your answer for 5 minutes.
- What does success look like for this project?
- Who will this affect?
- How are you measuring success?
Designate members of the team (or an external facilitator of your choosing) to go through the mappings, looking for key differences, points of tension, and points of agreement. If possible, in small teams, have teammmembers share their maps, identifying key learnings and points for further clarification and discussion.
This exercise was originally designed for the Mozilla Fellows for Science, by Kaitlin Thaney and Zannah Marsh, licensed under a CC-BY-4.0 license.