Agile Team Facilitation

  • Learn what facilitation is and why is it critical for the success of an agile team. 
  • Identify and practice the critical skills and essential practices that make an effective agile facilitator. 
  • Recognize how active facilitation improve the effectiveness of agile ceremonies.
 
This dynamic and interactive class is designed to help students learn the practical skills necessary to guide and coach agile teams to be successful and to reach their optimum efficiency. These skills begin with active and effective agile team facilitation. 
 
This course offers dynamic lectures reinforced by in-class exercises to ensure that students not only hear the concepts but are also able to put them into practice. During the course, we will cover a range of facilitation topics:
  • The relationship between facilitation and coaching, examining the evolutionary progression from facilitation of meetings and ceremonies, through Agile Coaching, and into Enterprise Agile Coaching
  • Exploring why effective facilitation is important and necessary for the success of an agile team
  • The principles and essential practices of agile facilitation, as well as the most common antipatterns
  • The need to take into account the maturity of the team when planning for facilitation
  • Shepherding teams through effective meetings, fostering inclusiveness, and ensuring that all attendees have a voice that is heard
  • Maintaining neutrality to ensure team consensus in decision-making
  • How to take advantage of the physical space of a room to enhance agile ceremonies and other meetings
  • How to ask powerful questions to guide the team through analysis and decision-making
 
Interactive exercises will give students practice in the following:
  • Recognizing effective and non-effective facilitation
  • Resolving conflicts within a team
  • Leading and facilitating agile ceremonies
  • Using agile principles to help design and facilitate meetings
 
Who Should Attend
This course is intended for Scrum Masters, aspiring Agile Coaches, project or product managers, agile team members, or anyone interested in leading or otherwise ensuring the effectiveness of agile teams.

 

Course Outline
Agile Facilitation and Coaching
Agile Team Facilitation
Agile Coaching
Enterprise Agile Coaching
 
The Facilitation Mindset
The need for facilitation
What is facilitation?
The Agile Facilitator: Role and Activities
Principles of Agile Facilitation
Essential Facilitation Practices
Facilitation Anti-patterns
Exercise: Experience Bad Facilitation
 
Effective Meeting Design
Why Meetings?
Defining the meeting purpose and outcomes
Team maturity, facilitation needs, and meeting design
Meeting Design Models
Defining purpose/priorities, outcomes, content sequence, and logistics
Creating an engaging meeting environment
Tools to understand issues
Idea-generation tools
Decision-Making Techniques
Exercises for facilitating involvement and participation
Maintaining meeting energy
How to handle resistance
Exercise: Facilitation Exercises
 
Conducting a Facilitated Session
Basic principles of facilitation
Facilitating decision making
Exercise: Maintain Neutrality
Creating a collaborative space
Group Discussion: What kind of collaborative spaces do you have?
An Agile collaborative space: Characteristics
Group Discussion: What makes a space collaborative?
Facilitating full participation
Facilitating silent work
Exercise: Brainstorming Using the Paper Clip Method
 
Facilitating Collaborative Conversations
Using Meeting Organizing Tools
Characteristics of Powerful Questions
Active Listening
Aside: Nonverbal Communication
Providing Feedback
 
Clarifying Team Decision-Making Authority
Discussion: Decision-Making Authority
Group decision-making techniques
Reaching consensus - Fist of Five
 
Facilitating Agile Ceremonies
Effective Agile ceremonies require great meeting design
Why meet when we could just get things done?
Philosophy of Agile Ceremonies
Agile Ceremonies and Team Maturity
 
Facilitating the Scrum Process
The Scrum Process
Typical ceremony schedules
Purpose, Outcomes, Structure, Tips, and Pitfalls:
  • The Daily Scrum
  • Sprint Planning
  • The Sprint Review
  • The Sprint Retrospective
  • Backlog Refinement
  • Scrum of Scrums
For each ceremony above, Discussion: Applying what we have learned
For each ceremony above, Exercise: Facilitate each of the ceremonies
 
Exercise: Overview of Planning Poker
Exercise: Experience Sprint Planning - Estimation
 
Facilitating Remote Team Ceremonies
Exercise: Connecting Agile Principles to Agile Ceremonies
 
Class Daily Schedule
Sign-In/Registration 7:30 - 8:30 a.m.
Morning Session 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Lunch 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Afternoon Session 1:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Times represent the typical daily schedule. Please confirm your schedule at registration.
Training Course Fee Includes
• Tuition
• Course notebook
• Letter of completion