Case Study: Thoughtworks achieves effective virtual executive offsites and aligned global strategic planning with MURAL

thoughtworks - Customer Case Study

thoughtworks, a global software consultancy of 7,500+ people, faced the challenge of running its annual five-day Extended Global Leadership Team offsite with 27 leaders across 11 countries when the pandemic halted travel. They needed to convert highly collaborative planning activities—breakout groups, whiteboard-style ideation, and voting—into a virtual format while keeping engagement high, so they leaned on MURAL for digital facilitation and remote collaboration.

Using MURAL, facilitators broke the event into five three-hour sessions over three weeks, ran asynchronous prework (including votes on 16 initiatives), used dedicated mural spaces for breakout groups, and applied timeboxing and anonymous voting to keep sessions on track. The result was more engaging, efficient workshops with clearer real-time synthesis and broad adoption: over 3,500 thoughtworks employees now use MURAL (a 16x increase from before the pandemic), and executives have begun replicating the prioritization approach across the organization.

thoughtworks

James Pickett

Principal, Advisory Services