Validate. Don’t start from a blank slate.
You need an inception because you’re dealing with a relatively complex problem. As we’ve discussed already, complex problems benefit from writing things down. In an inception, you may not have the time for people to create documents and consume them; though I argue we should try that approach if your clients are open to it. However, even if your clients aren’t yet onboard with an asynchronous way of working, you need to balance deep thinking with synchronous collaboration.
Prepare, facilitate, synthesise, repeat
This means that as against starting your workshops on a blank slate, you need to bring some inputs to help facilitate the discussions effectively.
What information do you already have from the discovery or directly from the business to inform the questions you’re trying to answer in the workshop? Organise that and make it visible to everyone in the meeting.
What information have you synthesised from other workshops that apply to this meeting? Make that visible as well.
Finally, as a team of technologists, do you have a point of view about how to act on the information? Share that with your attendees too.
You can put this information on a collaborative whiteboard, using a visual facilitation framework of your choice. Alternatively, you can also do a version of a six-page memo to have everyone consume the background information in the first few minutes of the workshop. You’ll notice that when everyone starts from a shared understanding, you’ll arrive at decisions faster than otherwise.