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.
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
• Digital course materials
• Continental breakfasts and refreshment breaks
• Lunches
• Letter of completion
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