High Energy Development Sessions at PoliMonitor
Development Session at our Old Street office.
At PoliMonitor, everything we have built has come about because someone asked for it. Inundated with requests for a CRM, forward-looking briefings, transcripts of Parliamentary debates, and more, we have focused our efforts and delivered accordingly.
So naturally, when we recently asked ourselves ‘what should we build next?’ we went on to set up one of our Development Sessions. These involve speaking with potential or current users, asking them what they work on, and finding out how we can make those tasks easier. Most recently, we delivered one at a client’s office, and another at our own.
This might all sound a little dry - but it actually makes for a high energy, idea-rich environment by sticking to a few core principles:
Quantity over quality - we’re not looking for fully furnished flow charts and gleaming mock-ups. The most useful things to come out of these sessions are handfuls of rough drawings depicting solutions to problems, each produced in about 20 seconds.
Forget Meeting Etiquette - when people realise that they will be milling about for most of the meeting rather than sitting still for an hour, they’re usually a bit surprised. However, this gives a boost to the energy in the room.
Ditch the Presentation - As a rapidly expanding startup, we stay true to our roots by papering office walls in post-its and encouraging participants to ‘vote’ on ideas using stickers. This keeps people much more engaged than forty minutes of flipping through slides.
With COVID-19, Development Sessions have been thin on the ground the last few years. To our delight, we are now more able to organise them. The ones we undertook recently were great fun, and certainly won’t be the last.
