Whiteboarding is the use of a dry erase board in a meeting to explain concepts and ideas. The dry erase board is used to quickly draw, modify images and text.
Whiteboarding sessions are very useful in brainstorming, troubleshooting and collaborating with other team members .
They stimulate ideas and are very easy to use, but since the whole world is predominantly working virtual how do you use this technique to perform your business analysis work ?
Here are some tips on how to effectively use whiteboards virtually :
- Be focused : every good meeting starts with greetings, a brief introduction of all the participants and a summary of the meeting agenda. The meeting agenda should include the meeting goals, the problem that you are trying to solve and it should be written at the top of the whiteboard. This would be a constant reminder to the participants on the meeting’s purpose and keep them focused.
- Legible writing : as the meeting participant’s start discussing the problem, ensure that you write the ideas in a clear legible handwriting. One of the advantages of using a virtual whiteboard is that you have to type the ideas out so the text would be legible.
- Keep the ideas organized : as the ideas are shared by the participants, ensure that you keep those ideas logical and organized, this would make it easier to keep track of ideas. You can do this by splitting the board into two columns such as cause and solution. This would represent the potential cause of the problem and the proposed solutions to that problem.
- Discourage side talk : As the participants start discussing the problem they might get distracted and go off topic. So you have to keep them focused on the problem by taking note of all side topics. This techniques is commonly known as a “keeping them in a parking lot”, take note of all the side topics and inform the participants that they would be addressed at a later time. If you have some time leftover after the main problem has been addressed, then you can discuss the topics in the “Parking Lot”.
So why should you use a whiteboard ?
There are numerous advantages to using a whiteboard and they include the following :
- Easy to use : Whiteboards are easy to use and understand.
- Improved Collaboration : they are easy to use in brainstorming sessions because they can be used to illustrate ideas.
- Improves focus : having the meeting’s agenda written at the top of the whiteboard helps keep the participants focused on the problem and limit any distractions.
