Techniques
Learn a technique
Every technique on this site is taught twice: once as a story (the Greenbox team discovering it under pressure) and once as a facilitator playbook (what you need, who to invite, how to run it). This page maps one to the other. Rows without links are scheduled and on their way.
Where to start
- Facilitating a session this week? Go straight to the playbook library and grab the printable summary.
- Building a product or company? Read The Greenbox Story from the first chapter; the techniques arrive when the team needs them.
- Leading a team? Start with High Performance Teams, then pick playbooks from the table as problems show up.
- Studying for an AWS certification? The Exam Room has scenario walk-throughs grouped by certification.
| Technique | The story | The playbook |
|---|---|---|
| Customer Discovery Interviews Find out whether the problem is real before building anything |
Customer Discovery: Before the First Line of Code | The Workshop: Customer Discovery Interviews (coming 9 Mar 2028) |
| Retrospectives Inspect how the team works and pick one or two things to change |
Retrospectives: Catching the Wrong Kind of Fast | The Workshop: Retrospectives |
| Event Storming (Big Picture) Map a whole domain on one wall with everyone in the room |
Event Storming: Building Shared Understanding | The Workshop: Event Storming a Domain |
| Event Storming (Process Level) Zoom into one flow with the full four-colour palette |
Event Storming: Building Shared Understanding | The Workshop: Event Storming a Process |
| Event Storming (Architecture) Turn a process storm into aggregates and boundaries |
Lee, Remote (coming 18 Jul 2028) | The Workshop: Event Storming an Architecture |
| Example Mapping Refine a story into rules, examples, and open questions in 25 minutes |
Example Mapping: Making Stories Concrete | The Workshop: Example Mapping |
| Sprint Planning Commit to a goal the team actually believes in |
Sprint Planning: Turning Sticky Notes into Delivery | The Workshop: Sprint Planning |
| Impact Mapping Connect deliverables to the goal they're supposed to move |
Impact Mapping: Connecting Work to Goals | The Workshop: Impact Mapping |
| User Story Mapping See the whole journey and slice the thinnest version that works |
User Story Mapping: Seeing the Whole | The Workshop: User Story Mapping |
| Jobs to be Done Learn what people actually hire your product to do |
Jobs to Be Done: Why Subscribers Actually Stay | The Workshop: Jobs to be Done |
| Assumption Mapping Find the risky beliefs hiding in the plan and test the worst first |
Assumption Mapping: Testing What You Believe | The Workshop: Assumption Mapping |
| Business Model Canvas Check the whole business holds together on one page |
Business Model Canvas: Does This Actually Work? | The Workshop: Business Model Canvas |
| Prioritisation Order the work against a named constraint, not by volume of opinion |
Prioritisation: What Changes First | The Workshop: Prioritisation |
| DDD Modelling Draw the boundaries so the software matches the business |
Domain-Driven Design: Drawing the Boundaries | The Workshop: DDD Modelling |
| Building a Ubiquitous Language Agree what the words mean, one bounded context at a time |
Domain-Driven Design: Drawing the Boundaries | The Workshop: Building a Ubiquitous Language (coming 6 Jan 2028) |
| C4 Modelling Diagram the system at four zoom levels people can actually read |
Drawing the System: From Event Storm to C4 | The Workshop: C4 Modelling |
| Decision Tables Get the rules out of the expert's head and into a grid |
Decision Tables: Making Maya's Brain Explicit | The Workshop: Decision Tables |
| Forecasting Without Estimates Answer 'when will it be done' from throughput, not guesses |
Capacity Planning: The Seasonal Crunch | The Workshop: Forecasting Without Estimates (coming 21 Oct 2027) |
| Value Stream Mapping Find where the waiting is, then fix the worst queue |
Value Stream Mapping: Finding Where to Focus | The Workshop: Value Stream Mapping (coming 2 Dec 2027) |
| Wardley Mapping Decide build, buy, or borrow from position, not taste |
Wardley Mapping: Build, Buy, or Borrow? | The Workshop: Wardley Mapping |
| Dependency Mapping Untangle who is waiting on whom across teams |
API Contracts: Two Squads, One Direction | The Workshop: Dependency Mapping (coming 3 Feb 2028) |
| Pre-Mortem Declare the project dead, write the story of why, fix it while it's cheap |
The Workshop: Pre-Mortem (coming 9 Sep 2027) | |
| Blameless Post-Mortems Turn an incident into structural fixes instead of a hunt for someone to blame |
On-Call and Incident Response: When the Pager Goes Off | The Workshop: Blameless Post-Mortems (coming 4 Feb 2027) |
| Ensemble Programming Whole team, one keyboard, code written and reviewed at once |
Ensemble Programming: The Team Navigates, the LLM Types | The Workshop: Ensemble Programming (coming 11 Mar 2027) |
| Cynefin Sensemaking Work out what kind of problem you have before choosing a response |
Cynefin: Not Everything Needs a Workshop | The Workshop: Cynefin Sensemaking (coming 15 Apr 2027) |
| Threat Modelling Find the attacks before the attackers do |
Threat Modelling: What the LLM Didn't Think About | The Workshop: Threat Modelling (coming 20 May 2027) |
| The Planning Onion Trace today's work back to the strategy it serves |
The Planning Onion: Every Layer in One Place (coming 26 Nov 2026) | The Workshop: The Planning Onion (coming 1 Jul 2027) |
| Designing a Structured Interview Build a hiring loop that measures competencies, not confidence |
Hiring at Scale: Beyond the Referral Network (coming 10 Aug 2027) | The Workshop: Designing a Structured Interview (coming 18 May 2028) |
| Chartering a Community of Practice Give the Thursday thing a charter before it dies of agenda-less meetings |
Naming the Thursday Thing (coming 12 Jan 2027) | The Workshop: Chartering a Community of Practice (coming 8 Jun 2028) |
| Choosing the Right Workshop A meta-index: which session fits the problem in front of you |
The Workshop: Which Workshop When (coming 10 Dec 2026) | |
| Story Splitting Divide a too-big story into thin slices that each still deliver value |
Where the Users Are (coming 21 May 2030) | The Workshop: Story Splitting (coming 3 Aug 2028) |
| Risk Storming Put the architecture on the wall and hunt its risks together |
The Workshop: Risk Storming (coming 5 Oct 2028) | |
| Lean Coffee An agenda-less meeting where the room votes the agenda into existence |
The Workshop: Lean Coffee (coming 9 Nov 2028) | |
| Futurespective Run a retrospective on a future that hasn't happened yet |
The Workshop: Futurespective (coming 14 Dec 2028) | |
| Delegation Poker Make explicit, decision by decision, who actually holds the pen |
Delegation: The Management Gap (coming 5 Jan 2027) | The Workshop: Delegation Poker (coming 18 Jan 2029) |
| Team Self-Selection Let people choose their own teams against explicit constraints |
The Workshop: Team Self-Selection (coming 8 Feb 2029) | |
| OKR Setting Translate a quarter's direction into a few outcomes worth measuring |
The Workshop: OKR Setting (coming 1 Mar 2029) | |
| Design Sprint Five days from big question to watching five customers use the answer |
The Workshop: Design Sprint (coming 22 Mar 2029) |
Printable one-page summaries and full guides for the playbooks live in the workshop library.