Whiteboards for team brainstorms

Team brainstorms: Challenges and best practices

Brainstorming is a way to come up with solutions to complex problems and inspire creative thinking. Team brainstorms can generate a collection of innovative ideas that disrupt your industry or differentiate against your competitors. They are a collaborative exercise where teammates build off of each other's ideas for more diverse and nuanced results while strengthening team relationships.   

Apple, Amazon, and Netflix all had brilliant minds in their brainstorming sessions, but the outcomes didn’t just happen magically. Brainstorming is a puzzle to approach thoughtfully for it to work.

Brainstorming challenges

With much of the workforce working exclusively or partially remote, your team can’t always be in the same room together sitting at a conference table. So, modern teams try to replicate that close collaboration and immediacy of the in-person experience digitally.

When conducting virtual brainstorms, the leaders often have to juggle video conferencing, note-taking, screen sharing, and data entry all at once. It becomes a disjointed experience for all participants, and the results of the brainstorm are scattered across different places and tools. 

Whether or not your brainstorms are in-person or virtual, in general, they can become high-pressure, chaotic, and frustrating experiences if not well-managed. Some participants might feel hesitant to share ideas out of a lack of understanding or doubt. Others might dominate the session by trying to contribute as many ideas as possible, however incoherent.

Brainstorming best practices

Brainstorms are creative and experimental by nature, but should also be structured, organized, strategic, and use the best tools available. Here are some tips for a smooth and productive experience.

Create a comfortable environment for everyone

Provide a space for everyone of all collaboration styles and personality types to participate with different approaches, including:

• Breaking off into smaller discussion groups, then combining all ideas from each group
• Allowing time for team members to individually brainstorm before each sharing their ideas with the group
• Designating a timed, rapid-fire portion of the brainstorm to encourage creativity, spontaneous thinking, and a high volume of ideas to expand on

Ask questions before you find answers

Adopt MIT’s Hal Gregersen’s proven brainstorming methodology to challenge ideas and bring about diverse and varied perspectives. This entails framing brainstorms around one ultimate problem to solve and starting by having participants contribute questions based on the problem, not answers. The goal of this approach is to challenge assumptions and biases about the problem, leading to better, more innovative solutions.

Use the right tools

Finally, you need ways to document, discuss, and store all of the ideas, conversations, and questions that come out of your brainstorming session. Ideally, you can use one tool for all of these purposes instead of managing fragmented information in multiple places. This is where Confluence whiteboards come in.

How to use Confluence whiteboards for successful team brainstorming

Confluence whiteboards are the answer to running valuable remote brainstorming sessions that provide a positive experience for all involved. This Confluence feature is the digital version of the real thing but with more instant functionality. Confluence whiteboards combines visual discussion and note taking with deep jira integrations to turn ideas to action all from the convenience of one tool. 

Here are the interactive features and formats you can implement to guide and enhance your brainstorming sessions using Confluence whiteboards.

Templates

Instead of being faced with a blank page or not knowing where to begin, we have a range of templates available for your brainstorming session. Create a great starting point for your session to jump off from and make your own. Some of our templates that are particularly useful for team brainstorms:

Brainwriting

Brainwriting is a brainstorming technique where participants independently write down their ideas before sharing them with the group. Unlike traditional brainstorming, brainwriting avoids the free-for-all vocal exchange of ideas all at once. This method often leads to more and higher quality ideas and creates a psychologically safe environment where participants feel more comfortable contributing. It also produces a more diverse range of ideas by minimizing the influence of groupthink.

Concept map

A concept map is a visual tool to connect ideas using simple graphs. It’s designed around a primary topic and consists of central nodes representing concepts and connecting lines that illustrate relationships and hierarchy. It helps organize information, making complex topics easier to understand and facilitating more efficient problem-solving and decision-making.

Disruptive brainstorm

Disruptive brainstorming is a helpful technique to use when your team is stuck on a problem or needs to advance a campaign or project. This exercise starts with identifying the problem(s) you need to solve. Then, everyone contributes as many solutions as they can. Once you have a collection of ideas, you introduce “disrupt cards.” These add variables to the main problem or scenario, which gradually narrows down your ideas until you have a smaller, more focused set of winning ideas.

Sticky notes

Sticky notes are your digital Post-it Notes that you use to add the ideas you brainstorm to the whiteboard. Sticky notes make it easy to document and store ideas on the whiteboard for everyone to clearly see and interact with. They apply to any template and any kind of brainstorm.

Stamps and Stickers

Voting is an organized and democratic way for everyone to choose their favorite ideas and decide on priorities. You can vote using the stamps and stickers features that allow you to use visual feedback, like thumbs up or heart symbols.

Comments

Comments allow you to communicate about particular ideas or other elements on the whiteboard at any point during the live brainstorm session or async. Comments are useful for adding context to ideas, asking relevant questions, and expanding on them. This feature adds clarity and reduces the need for additional meetings or emails to discuss further. You can also use emojis to react to comments.

Mentions

Call your teammates’ attention to particular Stickies by mentioning them by name in a comment. Use mentions to alert someone that you’ve asked a question, responded to a question, left other feedback, or loop in other people as needed.

Jira integration

A unique benefit of Confluence whiteboards is the ability to convert any Sticky to a Jira issue. When the team identifies key results from brainstorms to take action on, you can turn ideas into assignments and deadlines to seamlessly progress to next steps.

Loom integration

The Loom integration with Confluence enhances and streamlines remote brainstorms. 

Team leaders can record a Loom video to set the context before the brainstorming session begins. This pre-recorded briefing ensures all participants are on the same page before they dive into the discussion, saving valuable meeting time. Team members can watch the video at their convenience and come prepared with ideas and questions.

Likewise, adding Looms to whiteboards at the end of a brainstorming session is another helpful benefit. You can record a recap video summarizing the key points, decisions, and next steps. This provides a helpful reference for both those who attended and a comprehensive update for anyone who couldn't make it.

Elevate your team brainstorms with whiteboards

Whether you’re a Confluence user who hasn’t experimented with whiteboards or are new to Confluence in general, try out whiteboards for yourself. There are many different approaches to brainstorming, and whiteboards can accommodate all of them. Test and continue to refine your process for better team brainstorming.