(Editor's note: These notes were originally not intended for inclusion on the Web Site, but in retrospect provide an interesting perspective on both the working group report writing process and the actual working group facilitation process.)
As I look at the original agenda, I note that I did not allocate time or an agenda item for reviewing relevant input material. This led to two minor breakdowns. The first was that I introduced the content of my own working paper late in the process. For a working group setting like this, the first day's work has to be designed around the assumption that noone has read an initiating position paper of this kind (although the WG description was a common starting point). I also should have presented it, when I finally did, in breadth-first fashion and with less discussion, except to clarify points, until after the entire starting framework had been presented.
The second minor breakdown was not building more directly on the results of the recent working group from Reuse Education `95, especially the material Dave Eichmann brought. Although my later review of this material supports Dave's statement during the WG that we were taking a complementary and not unduly overlapping approach, it would have been better from a process and team-building point of view to have had a brief presentation of this material up front as part of the agenda rather than an apparent diversion from it. Lessons Learned: Build in presentation of relevant input from other workshops, sources, etc. towards the front, but not at the very front, of the WG session. Make sure the WG objectives have been firmly enough established that these other materials will not be too much of a "magnet" unless the best strategy is clearly to build quite directly on some initial material.
Starting with the concrete scenarios was a good approach in terms of both content and process. However, we could have worked with the scenarios more directly throughout the discussion. This would have given each participant a natural leading (and/or informant) role as his/her scenario was discussed, and would have grounded our theory- building in concrete examples. When we finally took the time to revisit them, towards the end, our time was rushed but the scenarios still yielded a richness of detail that shed a good deal of light on the strengths and weaknesses of our approach.
Lessons Learned: