🔎 Show us your best template! 🥇
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Back when I was wandering around in my car with my giant sheets of white paper, markers, and sticky notes, the night before a session, I'd bring dinner back to the hotel, and draw out the maps we'd be working through the next day. 🚗 I loved this time. Picking the colors, writing the titles, and making sure everything was in order.
After sessions, I'd head back to the office, and start the process of typing up the session. Giant papers strewn every where. Sticky notes, words in marker all transcribed to the computer. 💻
I don't really miss the typing. (MURAL 4ever). I do miss coming in on a Monday morning to an office of facilitators and seeing everyone at their desks transcribing away. All our methods were similar but how we set up our maps varied by person. It was a rich, creative space, and it made me a better facilitator.
So, for this Template Tuesday, what is a template you built that you like, what need were you solving, and why did you build it?
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I'll go first! A month ago, I built a mural to use with my manager during our one on ones. I needed something to communicate
- What I was working on 📃
- Road blocks âš
- Professional development work 🎒
- Vacations and important date 📆
This was, of course, before our Template team released this lovely template. I wanted the template to capture the pattern of work over the course of a quarter, and provide references to guide the work.
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OOOO top tuesday question Amanda!!
I think my most favourite ever template I have made has GOT to be my personal planning/ diner template!!! I still use it every day.
I needed a fun way to log my daily activities and prioritise my week:
- The opening hours segment works as an analogue bar to move to work out roughly when you should be working to and from. I had just started a new position and wanted to check I was laying the foundations for success with my minimum hours. I also think it is more engaging than a graph or grid... where will the bar begin and end 😛 (!!).
- The (clean) Diner plate... important for every diner go-er to be able to access, for the full experience. Explained further down.
- The Order of the day board works as a place to put daily set tasks that repeat and are not forgotten. I wanted to get the feeling I was at a diner and I could look up above the counter and have all the main information I need to make an informed decision/ complete the right activity/ bring about satisfaction 😛.
- The Specials board is something that has high priority items on that I should constantly be referring to, as to accommodate sufficiently.
- The Surplus board is for anything extra that could be important- is it a space for links to podcasts? A book someone has mentioned in a meeting? I like to think of it as a space/ archive for personal development.
- Below the board(s) 👀👀:
- Shelving area, this is for the stock (tasks). Double click to add a sticky with a task, colour code as see fit.
- Fridge, this is to move items from the shelving area to show that they are important or should be considered in the context of the week.
- Plate, with date added on 'what's on your plate?' to add all the immediately important things that must be completed.
- The bag, one you have completed 'it's in the bag'. It is quite satisfying to move them over!!
The template link is here.
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I'm a big fan of the Concept Poster template from LUMA Institute:
The template has places to give the concept a name, explain who the concept would impact, a big space to illustrate the idea, and room for a rough timeline showing how the concept might get rolled out. I especially like the "How might it fail?" box, which is a good way to critique your own idea and covertly nudge other people to do the same.
This is especially powerful if your team makes a few competing concepts — the structure of the template makes it easy to debate and discuss the relative merits of each concept. You can make a Concept Poster in as little as 30 minutes, or as much as 4 hours or so. It has just the right level of "doneness" for sharing an idea with other people without overworking it or sinking too much time into it.
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Recently, I made some Postcards from the field that I sent to my team after each user interview. This is a great way to keep your team, and stakeholders updated while you're doing user research.
Often times research can take some time before you share out research findings. Sending postcards from the field after each day of interviewing helps capture the voice of the users to help build awareness amongst your team and stakeholders.
Once you have a great postcard designed, it's really easy to duplicate, update and quickly send over to your team and stakeholders!
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I've been exploring templates that work like a kit of parts. For an internal program I'm running, we introduce "HEROES" from our extended MURAL community. Once the audience knows what that person's superpowers are (expert facilitation, thought leadership, visual collaboration, etc.) I invite them to use the "NEMESIS TEMPLATE" to build a trading card themed visual for what that HERO'S Nemesis might be.
The template outlines 5 steps, and provides some parts to get people rolling...
- There is a trading card "frame" to start with, and the text can be changed to reflect the name of the Nemesis
- Some background graphics are provided, but you are encouraged to use the image search and crop tools to find your own.
- There are some nefarious-looking creatures (transparent PNG files) to choose from, but folks are encouraged to use image search (with "png" in the search term) to find their own as well
- I've included some speech bubbles so the Nemesis can share their catchphrase
- Get the layers right, make sure you name the character, group it and then share it!
Here are a few of the anti-heroes that have been created so far with the template...
And, what the template looks like...
Not only is the template fun to use, it engages the audience with anti-patterns, a way of thinking about what is by focusing on what the extreme opposite might be. For a hero who believes everyone is creative and has visual talent, there is "Scribbles" who's just a hater that tells people, "Y'all can't draw!" For our "Agile Heroes" there is "Dr. Waterfall" who won't budge until a formal (and lengthy) specification is delivered to his hands!
Who says learning can't be fun?
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The template that I think that has worked best for my new agile team is our Sprint Planning Template. We use it every two weeks and it provides great consistency for the squad. There are so many Planning Templates out there but when you find one that works, you tend to stick with it.
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