Generative AI Explore Workshop
Identify Generative AI use cases with business impact.
This workshop aims to help you identify business challenges and opportunities that can be addressed using Generative AI (Gen AI). With the help of opportunity cards, you will brainstorm various use case ideas, describe the most relevant ones, and then compare them to decide which ideas to pursue further.
GOAL
Identify Gen AI use case ideas based on business needs
PARTICIPANTS
3 - 10 department leads from business, IT, project sponsors and AI experts
DURATION
2 hours introduction + 1 day face-to-face / 2 half-days virtual
PHASE
Explore
Before You Start
- Host an introductory session on Generative AI
- Host a 90 min – 2 hour session prior to the workshop to introduce participants to Gen AI and show them how it can be beneficial in a business context.
- Select a business area to focus on
- To ensure the right set of attendees at the workshop, pre-select relevant business areas or departments. Consult with the customer to identify which sectors would benefit the most from the technology. This discussion can take place during the introductory session or in distinct meetings with the customer.
Materials you will need
Templates for Download
Download All TemplatesTemplates for Virtual Collaboration
Steps
The following steps are meant to guide you through the exercises of the workshop. For more detailed instructions and recommendations, download the Explore Workshop Guide.
Getting started
Start the session by covering the following points:
- Topic, agenda, and rules (10 min)
- Participants get introduced to agenda and purpose of the session. Indicate general behaviour rules such as: be on time, stay focused, contribute actively, etc.
- Participants’ introduction (15 – 20 min)
- Participants write their name, role, motivations and expectations for the session, as well as experiences and concerns related to Gen AI, on a sticky note and use it to present themselves to the team.
- Inspiration: Introduction to Gen AI (30 min)
- Include a Gen AI topic expert to explain what Gen AI is and how it can be used in business context. Use examples and demos of existing solutions if possible.
- Introduction to the opportunity cards (40 min)
- Use the opportunity cards to explain to participants how Gen AI can be used in a business context. Each card explains an opportunity Gen AI opens up based on its capabilities.
- Explain homework (10 min)
- Send participants homework to prepare for the next session (see next step)
Conduct this entire section in a separate (virtual) session prior to the workshop.
Homework
- Ask participants to:
- Collect areas for improvement
- Request participants to think about: “What processes and activities in your business area need to be improved and why?”. They should write down their ideas and bring them to the follow-up session. Ideally, participants can also send their ideas in advance, so the corresponding post-its can be prepared before the session.
- Get familiar with generative AI opportunities and limitations
- Ask participants to read the opportunity and limitation cards and identify 3 or 4 cards that inspire them the most. Then they should think about what scenarios could benefit from the capabilities mentioned in those cards, write the scenarios down and bring them to the follow-up session.
- Collect questions
- Participants should also write down any additional questions they have about the gen AI opportunities and bring them to the follow-up session
Identify areas for improvement
Silently, participants write down activities or processes that they think need improvements and indicate why. Have them share and place these on a whiteboard. Help participants to group similar ideas together as they share. Finally, review the groups and label each one with a clear, descriptive name. If you prepared this exercise before the workshop, validate the formed clusters with the participants and add missing aspects.
See example
Explore opportunities
Make sure the opportunity cards are placed on a whiteboard or wall in a row, but leave some space around them. Continue with the following exercises.
- Imagine Gen AI scenarios (50 min)
- Silently, participants write down scenarios illustrating how they could use the capabilities from the selected cards to improve activities and processes in their departments. Use the example scenarios on the cards as reference. Have participants share their ideas and place them under the corresponding card on a whiteboard. Help participants to group similar ideas as they share. Finally, review the groups and label each with a clear, descriptive name.
- Combine challenges and ideas (30 min)
- Go through each improvement area clusters formed earlier and move them adjacent to the scenario ideas that address them. It is ok if some ideas are not addressing a particular challenge, as they can still be considered opportunities to improve a current activity or process. Also, stand-alone challenges without scenario ideas might indicate that they are not suitable to be solved with Gen AI capabilities. Use the last 5 minutes to select the most valuable clusters and prioritise them (top 3 – 5).
See examples
Distribute responsibilities of mapping areas for improvement and scenario ideas among the participants to save time (e.g. each participant is responsible to map the ideas of one or two cards).
Define use case ideas
Have participants describe each idea cluster selected in detail using the Use Case Brief. The Use Case Brief includes three views: business, technical, and ethical. Start with the business view and, if you have a technical expert in the team, complete the technical view.
It can take more than 30 minutes per use case idea to fill in the different views of the Use Case Briefs. Therefore, it is recommended that you prioritize the selected ideas at the end of the previous step and follow that priority to fill in the details of each use case.
See example
Distribute the Use Case Briefs among the participants to save time and have a share-out afterwards. (e.g. each pair is responsible to complete the details for one use case idea)
Compare and prioritize
If you had more than one team working in paralell, bring all participants together and have them share their Use Case Briefs with the group. Then, position the Use Case Briefs or the use case names in a Value Heatmap relative to each other, based on agreed criteria (e.g. Business Value and Complexity). Discuss the position of the ideas in the Value Heatmap as a team and decide which use case(s) should be tackled first.
See example
Agreeing on the criteria to evaluate against might take too much time. Have the criteria selected in advance.
Next steps
In a team discussion decide for 4 – 5 action items to follow-up from this session. Indicate what needs to be done, until when and who will be responsible.
If a use case has not been selected yet, agree on a follow-up session to decide on the use case to move forward with, and ensure commitment of the team to continue.
A possible next step could be a scoping workshop to narrow down the use case or a discover workshop to detail out the content for the use case with end users.
You’re done!
Congratulations! You have now a clearer idea of what Gen AI can be used for and have a selection of potential use cases that can benefit from this technology.
You can now analyze how those potential projects fit within the overall strategy of your company. Once you have selected a use case to work on, continue with the methods of the Discover phase.
Your voice matters!
Have you tried out this method? We’d love to learn about your experiences, feedback, and ideas.