Collaborative Decision-Making
After Action Review (AAR)
Structured debrief with four questions for learning immediately after any project: what was planned, what happened, why the gap, and what to do differently next time.
Anticipating Challenges
Anticipating Challenges is a participatory activity in which teams imagine that their project has failed and analyze the possible reasons behind this scenario.
Backward Planning
La Planificación retroactiva ayuda a identificar los pasos necesarios para lograr un objetivo trabajando desde el resultado final hacia el presente, promoviendo la estrategia y la claridad grupal.
Bottleneck Analysis
The Bottleneck Analysis is a participatory tool for identifying and addressing recurring obstacles in a project, optimizing processes, and promoting effective collaboration.
Citizens Assembly
Randomly selected citizens who deliberate on a complex policy question over weeks or months, producing evidence-based recommendations free from organized interests.
Civic Dialogues
Structured conversations between citizens and institutions on specific policy issues, with explicit mechanisms for public input to influence concrete decisions.
Community Auction
The Community Auction is an activity where projects symbolically compete for resources, fostering collective evaluation and critical analysis of priorities.
Customer Journey Mapping
Visualize a person's complete experience with your service step by step, uncovering emotions, pain points, and improvement opportunities at every touchpoint.
Data-driven decisions
Data-driven decisions is a collaborative activity designed to help teams classify key questions, explore research methods, and balance qualitative and quantitative insights to drive better decision-making.
Decision maze
The Decision maze guides participants through paths and challenges that simulate real decision-making processes, promoting critical and collaborative learning.
Deliberative Poll
Combines a scientific survey with facilitated deliberation to measure how public opinion shifts when citizens engage with balanced information and genuine peer dialogue.
Design Sprint
Five-day method for going from a complex problem to a tested prototype — compressing months of design iteration into one focused week with real user feedback on day five.
Design Thinking Workshop
Innovation methodology in 5 phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. Learn to facilitate Design Thinking workshops centered on people's real needs.
Fishbowl discussion
Fishbowl is a participatory dynamic where a small group dialogues in the center while others observe, promoting active listening, multiple perspectives and deep reflection on complex topics.
Future Search Conference
Conference method that brings all system stakeholders together for 2–3 days to build shared understanding and co-create an actionable common future.
Guess the Number
Guess the Number is a participatory activity that introduces the Delphi prediction method in a simple way through repeated estimations and group analysis of objects in a jar.
Heat Map Voting
Heat Map Voting is a visual and collaborative technique for prioritizing key aspects within a set of ideas by distributing multiple votes across specific elements.
Impact vs. Effort Matrix
The Impact vs. Effort Matrix helps prioritize actions and decisions by evaluating them based on their impact and required effort, promoting efficiency and effectiveness.
Lean Coffee
Self-organized meeting format where participants propose and vote on topics at the start, then use time-boxing to keep the most valued conversations first.
Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
Participatory technique combining silent idea generation and anonymous voting to produce ranked priority lists free from hierarchical influence and social pressure.
OKR Workshop
A facilitated session where teams co-create their Objectives and Key Results — ambitious, measurable goals that align each person's work with organizational strategy.
Participatory Action Research (PAR)
A cyclical methodology where communities investigate their own problems, generate knowledge collectively, and take transformative action. Research done by communities, not on them.
Participatory Budgeting
Democratic process where community members vote directly on how to spend part of the public budget — turning citizens into active co-designers of public investment.
Participatory Scenario Planning
Method for thinking under uncertainty: diverse stakeholders build four plausible futures, then identify strategies robust enough to hold regardless of which scenario unfolds.
Participatory Service Blueprint
A co-design tool that maps a service's full anatomy — visible interactions and backstage processes — built together by the people who use and deliver it.
Pre-mortem
A risk analysis technique where the group imagines the project has already failed and works backwards. Surfaces blind spots, hidden risks, and unspoken concerns while there's still time to act.
Public Consultation
Formal process for collecting public input on proposed decisions before they are finalized, with explicit links between what was heard and how it shaped the outcome.
Six Thinking Hats
Edward de Bono's parallel thinking method: 6 structured perspectives — facts, emotions, caution, optimism, creativity, and process — for more complete group decisions with less conflict and cognitive bias.
Sprint Retrospective
Agile team practice: structured session at the end of a sprint to examine what worked, what didn't, and commit to concrete improvements for next time.
Team Charter Workshop
A foundational session where a new team co-creates their shared purpose, roles, working agreements, and norms — the social contract that makes real collaboration possible.
Technology of Participation (ToP)
ICA facilitation system with three core methods — ORID Focused Conversation, Consensus Workshop, and Action Planning — to move groups from reflection to committed action.
Theory of Change
A participatory framework that maps how a group's activities generate real change. Connects actions, outputs, outcomes, and impact — and makes visible the assumptions that must hold at every link.
Voice of Customer (VoC)
Research method for capturing what customers actually need and experience — in their own words — and translating that insight into concrete product and service improvements.
World Café
A structured conversational process where small groups rotate between tables and layer ideas collectively. Surfaces shared intelligence and consensus in groups of 20 to 100+ people.