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Effective Virtual Workshop Facilitation

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This practical, one day, hands-on course is designed to make preparing for and running virtual workshops easier. Designed especially for Business Analysis Practitioners, it focusses on a range of practical and applicable facilitation tools and techniques.  It specifically covers tools that are relevant for facilitation in fully virtual or ‘hybrid’ environments (where some people are collocated, and others are remote)

The course aims to help practitioners achieve the confidence they need to effectively facilitate tricky workshops in a virtual or ‘hybrid’ environment.

Course Duration: 1 Day

Course Content

1. Introduction: Why chose a workshop?
An introduction giving insight into why workshops are useful, the core roles that are involved, and how we might prepare for them (including how to select the attendees).
2. Virtual, Hybrid, Real-world:
An overview of the advantages, disadvantages and practical considerations for different types of workshop. 
3. Planning and Preparation
Practical tips for planning a successful workshop.  Including:

Stakeholder Insight:  Techniques for understanding our stakeholders, and how this might affect how we plan and run our virtual workshops, and how it might affect the techniques we use.  
Preparing Stakeholders: How to prepare our stakeholders for a workshop, and situations when it might be useful to hold pre-meetings with our stakeholders.
Contingency Planning: How to be prepared for technical issues.
Virtual Environment:  How to plan and set up a ‘virtual collaboration environment’ such as a Mural board for collaboration during the workshop.   The course will also briefly discuss other alternatives that can be used if a specific collaborative tool isn’t available.
4. Virtual Facilitation for Business Analysis
Techniques for using facilitated workshops for elicitation, analysis and validation, including:

Kicking Off: Techniques for ‘kicking off’ a workshop as well as techniques for keeping people engaged throughout 
Staying on Track: Keeping people ‘on track’ and ‘in scope
Creative Thinking: Practical application of creative thinking techniques  (brainstorming and ‘brainstorming enhancers’) 
Collaborative Game: Use of a ‘collaborative game’ during virtual workshops
5. Conflict to Consensus
Managing expectations and dealing with conflict—before, during and after the workshop!   Including:
– Why conflict occurs
– Recognising conflict
– Practical negotiation techniques
6. After the workshop ends
A brief discussion on how to document the output from a workshop, and what to do next.

Video Overview

Inclusive Material

Each delegate receives a PDF copy of the slides from the session.  Note, since this is a fully virtual session, all material is provided digitally.

Course Endorsement

This course is endorsed by IIBA®.

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Next Steps

Want to run the course for your team?

For more information and to book this course for your organisation please contact us: