Why are brainstorming and nominal group technique useful in enhancing group creativity?

Group creativity techniques are used to generate ideas within a group of people or stakeholders. There are different activities that project managers can organize to identify ideas for the project to meet the requirements. Below mentioned are the different types of techniques that can enhance creativity and decision-making within the group.

Group Creativity Techniques 

When asked the question about providing ideas for project requirements, no one exactly knows where to start. However if the project manager asks about specific rather than abstract concepts, the team members are much more likely to contribute to something that relates to a particular area of requirements. This process is called as ‘Group Creativity Technique.’

Group Creativity Techniques in Project Management

The critical feature of the group creativity technique is that it allows the project manager to collect new ideas and concepts from the team members by initiating proper communication. It’s a technique that is used to generate ideas within a group of stakeholders because the stakeholders are the decision-makers when it comes to finalizing the deliverables of a product.

Methods for Effective Creativity Techniques

The techniques used for enhancing the creativity of the groups:

Brainstorming

It is a group creativity technique in which members are allowed to generate as many ideas/requirements as possible without criticism. The brainstorming technique does not prioritize the ideas. In this technique, the participants are safe to present their very own creative ideas even though some ideas are unrealistic. During the process, all the generated ideas/requirements are recorded without any assessments. Additionally, a productive brainstorming session triggers one idea from another, enabling the team members to spot the connections between the ideas. It is important to note that this type of synergy is not found during one-to-one sessions.

The Nominal Group Technique

It is a technique for small group discussion in which ideas and requirements are ranked and prioritized by all the team members of the group after generating the list of requirements. It enhances the brainstorming with a voting process that is used to rank the most useful ideas for further prioritization. This technique prevents the domination of a single person over the discussion by allowing the voices of all members to be represented. The project manager should ask the team to rate each idea under a particular heading for providing a better result. All the requirements that are generated or chosen should be testable and measurable.

Mind Mapping

It is used through individual sessions with each team member. The project manager then consolidates the ideas into a single map to create a common ground of understanding. A technique that starts with the idea of the project in the middle, and then stakeholders branch out from the central idea and generate more requirements. This process will provide an overview of the project, which will allow the project manager to determine if there is an imbalance in the requirements or whether one set of needs was weighted more heavily than others.

Affinity Diagram

It takes ideas and groups them into categories with similar ideas or requirements. Thus, they are arranged with ideas that they have an “affinity” (similarities) with. It is a technique used to classify a large number of ideas for analysis or review. Affinity diagrams can either be used alone or in conjunction with brainstorming and the nominal group techniques as well.

Multi-criteria Decision Analysis

When the process of gathering requirements is taking place, the project manager often needs to balance several criteria to determine the best set of requirements for a product. Multi-criteria decision analysis identifies the various measures that the project manager will use to evaluate requirements and then assigns a high-level value to each criterion like risk levels, uncertainty, and valuation, to assess and rank many ideas.

Conclusion

The collective collaboration of the individuals adds value to the end product and eventually leads to customer satisfaction. When the requirement is met with high efficiency and coordination amongst the group, the group creativity techniques prove to be one of the best practices a project manager can use to keep the group motivated.

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Lucy Brown

Lucy Brown has many years of experience in the project management domain and has helped many organizations across the Asia Pacific region. Her excellent coordinating capabilities, both inside and outside the organization, ensures that all projects are completed on time, adhering to clients' requirements. She possesses extensive expertise in developing project scope, objectives, and coordinating efforts with other teams in completing a project. As a project management practitioner, she also possesses domain proficiency in Project Management best practices in PMP and Change Management. Lucy is involved in creating a robust project plan and keep tabs on the project throughout its lifecycle. She provides unmatched value and customized services to clients and has helped them to achieve tremendous ROI.

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