Efficient Use of Sounding Board Method at Project Milestones and its Potentials for Virtualization

Project milestones in major product development projects are often the only possibility to discuss critical points with all relevant stakeholders. This is even truer in the context of globalization as these projects are run by worldwide spread teams integrating a growing number of stakeholders. One way to improve the involvement of all stakeholders is the application of the Sounding Board Method which concentrates on the content of feedback while suspending defending of results or ideas. In this paper the authors present a case study which was conducted with a German automotive manufacturer showing how to adapt the Sounding Board Methods for the efficient use at project milestones. In this context it is shown how collective intelligence can be used also for non-virtual collaboration. Subsequently the authors present a study outlining possibilities to implement the Sounding Board Method also for virtual project milestones in the future.