Brainstorming sessions have a bad reputation, but my experience is largely positive. They can be exciting and motivating, giving the participants a chance to have their voice heard and giving you a diverse pool of ideas.

The downside comes when brainstorming sessions go off track, either because people start discussing other things or, even worse, because people start discussing an idea that doesn’t solve the problem.

To resolve this, at the beginning of a brainstorming session I set criteria for what a good solution will look like. For example the criteria might be that the solution has to:

be reusable
be scalable
move key metric
not require a mobile app

Setting these criteria does not prevent ideas from being suggested, but it can help shut down a discussion that is not productive by getting people to evaluate the idea against the criteria.