Description
Open Space Technology is a way to enable a diverse group of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events where the outcome is unclear. In Open Space sessions, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance.
Open Space works best when the work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution (and potential for conflict) are high, and there is an urgency to identify solutions.
Typical Roles
Agile Team
Agile Leader
Business SME
Product Owner
Desired Behaviors
- 1.
Identify the major themes that will set the boundaries around Open Space discussions and agendas.
- 2.
Raise issues that are most important to a representative subset of Open Space meeting participants.
- 3.
Plan the Open Space meeting with the assumption that all of the issues and ideas raised will be addressed by those participants most interested, qualified, and capable of resolving them.
- 4.
Conduct the Open Space meeting in a timeframe no longer than one or two days. Within that time, all of the most important ideas, discussion, data, recommendations, conclusions, questions for further study, and plans for immediate action will be documented in one comprehensive report. This report will be finished and in the hands of participants when they leave.
- 5.
Take advantage of visual information techniques, including photographs, to record Open Space information.
- 6.
Prioritize the information generated during the Open Space. This may be done at the end of the Open Space meeting, or in a brief follow-up session.
- 7.
Make the results of the Open Space event available to the entire organization or community within days of the event.