Drawing Toast with a Product Owner Twist! Using a fun drawing game to define a common language

Problem statement: IT and business units often struggle to understand each other’s needs. The business often thinks that we will always say “no”.

This is a train the trainer workshop, where you will learn and practice a new game to play with stakeholders to break down communication barriers between IT and the business units we support.

Solution: I've adapted Tom Wujac's Draw Toast exercise to help connect Product Owners, Development teams and the business units, in terms of features, architecture, complexity of design, and MVP (minimum valuable product).

Following this fun activity of drawing a seemingly simple everyday activity, participants learn to identify features they truly need in a system, the design of the system, and how to rank features so that they get a product of value as early and as often as possible. They also learn that in Information Technology, NO rarely means NO, it usually means yes but later, or yes but differently……it’s all about prioritizing needs with the most business value delivered first.

It’s Drawing Toast, with a Product Owner twist!