Lightning Decision Jam Template

What is the Lightning Decision Jam template?

Conduct a Lightning Decision Jam session (also known as LDJ) with your team to help them make faster decisions and find quick directions. Define the event’s goal and see what works and what doesn’t for your organization. Let everyone express their thoughts during short discussions and choose the most essential solutions and ideas collaboratively.

Prioritize your ideas and problems and ask the participants how you might solve the challenges. Decide together how to execute them by creating a draft action plan. Start working on delivering the solutions right after the session ends by turning the outcomes of the LDJ session into actionable Jira items.

What are the benefits of the Lightning Decision Jam template?

Thanks to the Lightning Decision Jam template, you can:

• Turn unproductive, open, and unstructured discussions into creative problem-solving and clear decision-making sessions. 
• Identify the problems your organization faces and focus on finding the right solutions.
• Bring many teams’ representatives together to brainstorm new ideas and take action without an over-excessive discussion.
• Determine your next steps based on how much effort, time, and energy you will need to fulfill your obligations and what the impact will be.
• Agree upon clear action steps that can start being implemented once the session is over.

How to use the Lightning Decision Jam template in a few steps?

1. Invite participants to your workshops by sending them an email invitation or sharing a link to the whiteboard.
2. Gather with your teammates on a video call on your board and define the session’s goal on a sticky note.
3. Using the Sailboat Retrospective part on the board, write down the positive aspects of your work on sticky notes and elaborate on what propels your projects forward. Do this part of the exercise for about ten minutes by setting up a timer.
4. Once positive aspects are ready, ask participants to write down the problems holding them back and encourage a discussion. Spend ten minutes on this part of the exercise as well.
5. Vote on sticky notes that you just prepared using the dot voting method. Each of the participants can assign a maximum of three dots. You can assign them separately to each sticky or assign them all to one problem you think is the most important. This part should take not more than three minutes.
6. As the session moderator, copy and paste sticky notes on the prioritization line according to their importance — low priority (with the least number of votes) and high priority (most voted sticky notes).
7. With your group, reframe the problems into challenges by creating the “How might we…” questions. Gain different perspectives by adding as many HMW questions to the problems as possible.
8. Decide how many challenges you would like to brainstorm during your session and paste them onto the next step. Invite participants to propose solutions to challenges on sticky notes. Make sure this part of the exercise does not exceed five minutes, and only then start a ten-minute discussion.
9. Again, vote individually on the best solutions in your opinion. This time you will be able to assign up to six votes. It doesn’t matter whether you assign one, three, or all six votes per sticky note. Set up a timer for one minute for this exercise.
10. Copy and paste the sticky notes with solutions onto the effort/impact matrix. It will help you determine how much time and energy your team will need to implement them and to which degree they would solve the problems of your organization. Try to reach a consensus while putting the sticky notes in appropriate places on the axis.
11. Paste the “sweet-spot” solutions from the matrix into the last frame and ask participants to propose actionable steps toward the testing phase. Make sure the proposed steps are doable in up to three weeks but do not outline the entire process. A draft version of initial testing will do just fine. Devote a maximum of ten minutes for this part. 
12. Turn ideas into actionable Jira items with two clicks and end the exercise at this stage. Conduct a new one whenever necessary.

**This template has been originally created by AJ&Smart.