3.0 EXAMPLE OF FACILITATION DESIGN
The flow of the event is very important. Remember there is no perfect agenda. I suggest experimenting as much as possible so you can learn how the room reacts and how a certain exercise can change the entire feel of the meeting/workshop.
Let’s look at agenda flow by reviewing an agenda for a special program level retrospective with about 50 people. I felt this one was particularly transformative for these teams and led to many more months of Agile coaching and transformation on a larger scale.
Goal of the meeting:
The new leadership wanted to hear from the teams about what could be changed to make the next Release more successful.
Why was this an opportunity for transformation?
This program, like so many programs, had gotten thrown into the whirlwind of delivery with fixed dates and pressures. Although the desire to use Agile practices and mindsets was there, the pace of the work unfortunately didn’t encourage it. We’ve all been there, and we get it. At the time of this retrospective, there were no Agile Coaches engaged with this program. So when the new management wanted to hear from the teams in an Agile retrospective, of course this was an opportunity for transformation. This was giving direct access to 50 people to experience collaboration, interacting together as individuals, and responding to change for the next release. It directly aligned with the goals for Agile transformation.
Thought Processes/Design of the Agenda:
Deliberately designing this retrospective workshop agenda allowed us to focus on several desired outcomes:
Create a direct opportunity for the voices of the teams to be heard
Provide a clear channel for them to prioritize their improvement needs for the next Release
Get to know each other across teams
Build trust and safety to share honestly
Enable transparency
A summary of the thought processes behind this agenda design:
The first couple activities would warm the teams up and provide a visual feedback mechanism without conflict. As the trust level among the participants grew, they would be more open to writing their honest, transparent retrospective comments in small groups. By the end of the workshop, as they became empowered, they would end by prioritizing their needs as a large group.
You can see the desired progression of empowerment and transparency. A well designed agenda is fluid so they barely know they are following any rules of engagement during the exercises. If I had jumped directly into “tell me right now what you need in the next 3 months”, it probably would have been a very dismal outcome.
The Facilitation Agenda Flow:
“Tribes” exercise was the start and it was used to build rapport (Please see the appendix for example questions used during the Tribes exercise).
Another opener I’ve used for building rapport is any type of picture cards, where everyone chooses a picture and explains why they chose this. A fun story from this exercise is that someone on the team had “run with the bulls” in Barcelona! You should have seen how impressed the rest of the team was. That sort of fun doesn’t normally come out in day to day conversation.
“Constellations” exercise was next allowing silent expression of opinion (Links to resources from Lyssa Adkins that explain constellations are in the appendix).
“Silent Brainstorming” in small groups in the retrospective portion to build on the trust that was gained in the Constellation exercise.
“Rotating Flip charts” allowed the whole group to see what other groups had put on their small group retrospective boards.
Small Group Prioritization/Voting allowed each group to express their top desire for change in the next release.
Large group prioritization via a grid outlining “Impact to the Team” (Low to High) and “Ability to Fix” (Low to High). We gathered back together as a large room and had each team place their #1 recommendation on the grid as a visual radiator.
“ROTI” (Return on Time Invested) was used to express if the team thought the1.5 hours spent in the program level retrospective was worth it. The scale was 0 (No value) to 4 (high value). The majority of the feedback was in 3 or 4, and all of the sticky notes in the 2 category were because they wanted MORE time!
Observations/Effects:
By designing a collaborative agenda, I saw the people come alive. I saw their boldness grow once they realized this was a safe setting to express their opinions. That is another key role of the facilitator…..keeping the environment safe for self-expression. It’s a skill I’ve worked hard on learning to say “thank you for sharing” and not allow the cross talk. What I’ve seen in the participants is that the first controversial thing they voice to the larger group…..their body language is ready for the attack back. They are tough skinned and say it politically correctly expecting someone else to talk back or challenge what they just said. When I, the facilitator, keep the room in check and show appreciation for the self-expression, I see the person soften just a tiny bit. And then bit by bit, over the course of the session, I can see them take flight into the freedom to speak their needs and opinions without getting beaten back down. The facilitator holds the space for people to take flight into transparency.
One of my greatest joys seen in this program was that the people really started taking the transformation as their empowered responsibility. It stopped being a thing management was doing, or the company was doing. A spark had been ignited in them. They started scheduling their own retrospectives and their own agendas. I really enjoyed seeing their energy and empowered actions in the months that followed
4.0 SUMMARY
In my years as a professional trainer I was never asked by an executive if I would teach them how to do collaborative decision-making techniques. I was never called by a corporate manager who wanted to run better meetings and asked, “How do I design an agenda that makes this collaborative and helps me to hear all the voices on my team?” I was getting calls at least once a week to enable people with facilitation techniques or to help them design collaborative agendas that contain these exercises. This transformation was part of the Agile culture transformation. It may not have been implementing Agile software development techniques but it was changing the culture with the Agile principles of Individuals/Interaction, Collaboration and Responding to Change. If we can move the needle on the way people approach decision-making or the way they collaborate as a portfolio/team, then I think we’ve made impactful progress towards the Agile mindset shift in an organization as a whole.
5.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to honor Jean Tabaka for her incredible contributions to this topic and bringing collaboration into the forefront in our community. Thank you to The Agile Coaching Institute and Lyssa Adkins, Michael Spayd and Michael Hamman for the important part The Agile Coach Bootcamp played in my growth as a facilitator. I’m thankful to Andy Brown for his influence on my agile growth and first exposure to the Agile Coach Bootcamp. I’d also like to acknowledge Amy Palazzolo and Ghida Choukair for giving me freedom in my day to day job and trusting me as I brought some crazy concepts. And so many thanks go to Nanette Brown, my shepherd for this experience report. Her guidance was invaluable!
REFERENCES
Adkins, Lyssa “Coaching Agile Teams” Addison-Wesley, 2010
Derby, Esther and Larsen, Diana “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2006
Kaner, Sam “Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making” Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series 3rd Edition, 2014
Tabaka, Jean “Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders (Agile Software Development Series)” Addison-Wesley, 2006
Agile Coaching Institute: http://www.agilecoachinginstitute.com/agile-coach-bootcamp/
APPENDIX
Constellation:
Informal Constellations is an ORSC tool (Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching) developed by CRR Global Inc. co-founders Marita Fridjhon and Faith Fuller.
Constellations is documented in the following online locations:
Lyssa Adkins Examples of Questions Coaching Agile Teams website:
Lyssa Adkins Agile 2015 Conference PowerPoint:
Lyssa Adkins Agile 2015 Conference Step by Step Guide:
Tribes:
Tribes was also learned in the Agile Coach Bootcamp by the Agile Coaching Institute.
Not documented online but below are some example statements I use when I facilitate it. Obviously it needs to be demonstrated by the facilitator and after the facilitator throws out a couple sentences, I like to open up the floor for the participants to take it from there. If no one jumps in, then I have a couple “plants” in the circle that I prepped with questions to get the flow moving.
Example Questions:
- I love kayaking in the summer
- Attending a live football game is the best
- Playing with my grandkids is something I love
Silent Brainstorming:
Rotating Flipcharts:
Technique learned in Agile Coach Bootcamp. Also partially documented here http://www.iaf-methods.org/node/5104
Return on Time Invested:
I got this technique from a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqtPZYigfNI) of Diana Larsen and Esther Derby in 2007. The book would be:
Derby, Esther and Larsen, Diana “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2006