How to run a remote EventStorming workshop
EventStorming (often written Event Storming) gets a group to describe a business process as a timeline of events, on one wall, in a few hours. It works remotely too — if the board does the job the paper roll and the pens did.
What you are aiming for
By the end, the wall holds the process from left to right as it happens: every domain event in order, what causes each one, who is involved and where the open questions are. That picture is the point. It shows the people who run the process, the people who build the software for it and the people who pay for it the same thing, often for the first time.
A big-picture session covers a whole business flow and suits eight to fifteen people. A process-level session goes deeper into one part of it with fewer. The steps below work for both.
Before the session
- Invite the right mix. Domain experts who know how the work is really done, people who build the systems, and someone who can decide. Missing any of them leaves gaps on the wall.
- Prepare the board. The EventStorming template opens with an empty wall and a legend of 8 kinds of note, so nobody has to remember which colour is which.
- Send one link. Share an editor link with the group ahead of time. Guests join without an account and choose the name that shows beside their cursor.
- Plan the timeboxes. Remote energy drops faster than in a room. Plan breaks every hour and a clear end time.
Running it
1. Chaotic exploration (15–20 minutes)
Ask everyone to write domain events: orange notes, one event each, in the past tense — "Order placed", "Invoice sent". Put them roughly where they happen in time and do not discuss them yet. Start the shared timer so everyone sees the same countdown in the dock.
2. Enforce the timeline (30–45 minutes)
Now make it one story. Walk the wall from left to right, merging duplicates and filling the gaps. Spotlight your view while you walk it: everyone's screen follows yours, and anyone who wants to look elsewhere just pans away. When people disagree, add a red hotspot and move on — marking a problem is more useful than solving it at this stage.
3. Add causes and people (30–45 minutes)
Add blue commands for the decisions that trigger events, small yellow actors for the people who make them, violet policies for "whenever this happens, do that", pink external systems, and green notes for the information people look at to decide. Draw frames around the parts that belong together once they appear; a frame keeps what is inside it together when you move it.
4. Pick what to tackle (10 minutes)
Start dwell voting from the Facilitate menu. Everyone rests on the hotspot they think matters most for 2 seconds, or taps it. The count shows on each note and the leader is outlined. Write the winners down before you stop voting — the counts clear when it ends.
After the session
Lock the board so it stays the record of what the group agreed, and export it: OCIF to reopen or archive, PDF or PNG to send to people who were not there. The hotspots you chose are your next session's agenda.