Did you know Atlassian offers an awesome series of free resources to help teams plan and execute workshops and sessions that improve teamwork and collaboration?
This is known as the “Team Playbook,” and it provides exercises for all types of workplace collaboration challenges and scenarios, from getting to know your teammates to reflecting on the outcome of a recent project.
You can do most of these team plays either in person or as a remote team. However, whether you are working in person or remotely, you will want a way to record and document the outcome of your workshop session both to refer to later and reflect on its impact.
You’ll want to do this in a shared resource that is accessible to the whole team, like a Confluence page. But many of these team plays also include some sort of visual element — so you’ll also want to make sure you’ve installed Gliffy, which allows you to create visuals directly in Confluence with no additional logins or connectors.
Here are the top 7 Atlassian Team Plays that get even better with the help of a Confluence-native visual tool like Gliffy.
1. Mind Mapping
What it is: The purpose of the Mind Mapping play is to brainstorm ideas related to an issue or concept and then organize those ideas. You start with a question and encourage the team to freely share ideas as they come in a relaxed setting that allows for flexibility and creativity.
The goal of mind mapping is to provide the spark of an idea that can eventually lead to a solution.
How Gliffy helps: You could draw a mind map on a whiteboard, snap a pic, and insert the image into your Confluence page. You could add in a diagram that you created in another tool with a connector tool or by downloading it as an image. Or, you can create a mind map and complete this team play without ever leaving Confluence! Gliffy is the fastest and easiest way to record all your ideas right in your workspace.
Back to top2. Empathy Mapping
What it is: Empathy Mapping is a way for product teams to explore user personas and discover what drives their actions and decisions by stepping into their shoes.
For this exercise, you create a simple visual map with four quadrants that helps you break down what the user is thinking, feeling, doing, and saying as they interact with your product. The goal of this activity is to reinforce design thinking and gain a deeper understanding of user needs.
How Gliffy helps: Do you keep your user research on a Confluence page? You can also create your empathy map right on the page and use the data you’ve collected to organize your thoughts. This helps you keep all of your product discovery information in the same place, making it easy to refer to and share later.
Back to top3. Feature Kick-Off
What it is: The Feature Kick-Off is meant for teams to use when they have a feature that is more than just a concept, but it hasn’t been fully planned and developed. In this exercise, the product owner or designer leads a team discussion to build confidence in the value of the new feature and develop the concept before moving forward. This creates a shared understanding of the value and goals behind the team’s work.
How Gliffy helps: Since this exercise involves walking through and getting feedback on a journey map, you’ll need to create one beforehand. With Gliffy, you can create the journey map on a Confluence page where the rest of your feature information also lives, so you can run the exercise smoothly and share it as a resource with the team.
Back to top4. IT Project Poster
What it is: This play is all about creating an IT strategy from the ground up rather than reverse-engineering a project strategy from a solution. The IT Project Poster is a living document that grows and changes as you explore a problem and solutions and gather more information and feedback. It is the base that forms the rest of the project plan and helps teams define problems, evaluate solutions, and plan a strategy for implementation.
How Gliffy helps: An important part of working through solutions while creating your IT Project Poster is visualizing the solution, because this is more effective than reading a wall of text. You can create flow diagrams that show both technical aspects and a user’s perspective. Gliffy makes it easy to include visuals directly in your project poster.
Back to top5. Ludicrously Complex Software Projects
What it is: Have you ever worked on a software project with complicated logistics and a poor communication plan? Managing different platforms, products, and teams and coordinating them all to create a cohesive result is no easy task.
This Team Play guides you through important concepts, such as creating trust and shared understanding, and establishing key dependencies and milestones that help facilitate cross-functional collaboration.
How Gliffy helps: One of the best ways to build trust, which is one of the key concepts in this Team Play, is to make sure that no one is holding onto knowledge that other members of the team don’t have access to. Developing software documentation that captures important details in an accessible way will help the team build trust and collaborate more effectively, and visuals are an important piece of creating effective documentation.
Back to top6. 5 Whys
What it is: 5 Whys analysis is an exercise that encourages teams to dive below the surface and explore the root cause of an issue rather than acting on assumptions.
It’s a simple exercise — you start with a problem statement and ask “Why?” then work backwards, using your answer to the previous question as the base for the next one. This will help you unravel the root cause of your problem and form a solution that is a true fix, not just a band-aid over a larger issue.
How Gliffy helps: It can be helpful to visualize the chain of causes as you work through your questions with the team. Gliffy allows you to do this directly in Confluence, and even has a template for 5 Whys analysis, which you can find under the “Brainstorming Techniques” category when you create a new diagram.
Back to top7. Network of Teams
What it is: The Network of Teams helps teams map out stakeholders involved in a project or initiative in order to improve cross-functional communication and collaboration.
The exercise starts with a strategic goal, from which you map out all of the teams that are involved in reaching it based on their type and level of influence. Organizing all this information in a visual format that allows you to see what each of the teams’ roles are at a glance.
How Gliffy helps: Map out your network virtually with Gliffy, and then all you have to do is click save to have your Network of Teams right there on a Confluence page. All diagram text is searchable in Confluence, so it’s easy to find any of the information included on it whenever you need to take a look.
For even more tips for identifying and mapping out stakeholders, check out our stakeholder mapping blog!
Back to topFind Your Team’s Next Play
Try out any one of these plays or check out the full Team Playbook on Atlassian’s website. It’s full of workshop ideas for any occasion, and many of them include some sort of visual element, so don’t forget to add Gliffy to your Confluence space before getting the team together. It’s free for 30 days, so you can see for yourself how it changes your team’s approach to teamwork.