What the Team Would Change Next Time

• Team leaders would arrive a day early for training. Although the team had a dress rehearsal of the process via conference call, and team leaders were invited to participate, the team leaders were not as prepared as they could have been. The team coordinators were able to jump in and assist; however, the team had two teams go off track. One team lost time because the team leader accidentally skipped two steps in the process, and it took the team a couple of hours to refocus. The other team never accomplished one of the steps, the gap analysis, because the team leader arrived with his own agenda. Had the leaders understood, and been comfortable with, the JAD environment and assessment process, these glitches might not have occurred.

• The team would implement a better system to collect the individual votes regarding the importance of each feature. Table G-4 shows the format that was used. Participants voted on paper, and the assessment team entered the votes in the master list spreadsheet at 2:00 a.m. The team adjusted this during the second round of team meetings by asking participants to submit their votes electronically; however, there was still a lot of cutting and pasting. You would think a bunch of technology project managers would be able to figure this one out!

  Table G-4. Individual Data Collection Form

  Item Number	Category	System Feature	Short	Importance Ranking	Primary Driver	Long	Importance Ranking	Primary Driver
  Individual Work Sheet Key Primary Driver Entries: Legal Financial Regulatory Revenue Cost Industry standard Country request Other Short entries: Range 3 to 18 months Long entries: More than 18 months

  
  

• Team coordinators and managers would be given a plan of action for the week to 10 days after the session. Although the team had a high-level idea for the next steps, the three coordinators and their manager were completely exhausted at the end of the week. By Friday afternoon they were unable to form complete sentences and would laugh hysterically at all suggestions. The team lost a bit of momentum while regrouping in the week after the workshop. A detailed list of next steps would have been difficult to formulate prior to the workshop because the team was not completely certain of the results; however, the team should have had a high-level plan in place.