As I mentioned a few weeks back, I've been working with the Internet and E-Communications Programme (IEP) team at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International to organise and plan a 2 year work programme for the IEP — one that best meets the objectives they've set for themselves and that gives them better visibility into what is actually achievable given their staff and resource constraints.
Last week I met with the team for the day to do two things: to come up with ways the IEP can better manage its ongoing operations (i.e. those repetitive tasks that must be done but never end like keeping site content up-to-date) and to begin to prioritise its projects (those temporary endeavours undertaken to produce unique results like replacing the CMS used to keep site content up-to-date).
To accomplish the former, we used dotmocracy, an equal opportunity and participatory group decision-making process my colleague and friend Jason Diceman introduced me to a couple of years ago. I'd never facilitated a dotmocracy session before, so I read the most recent version of the handbook, got some last minute instruction and advice from Jason himself, and it ended up working out really well — the group came up with more than a dozen proposals (ideas) for improving the ongoing operations of the IEP, which, once dotted, we were able to sort in order of agreement and begin to develop action plans and next steps around. A highly recommended experience :)
Check out Jason's site/company, Co-op Tools, for more on the process or to get him into your organisation to facilitate a session.
projectmanagement, programme, planning, softwaredevelopment, nptech, importantprojects, amnestyinternational, dotmocracy, facilitation, jasondiceman, cooptools