Agile Chennai 2022 Getting Better at Remote Facilitation Subrahmaniam SRV CEO, OutcomesPlus Consulting

1. GETTING BETTER AT
FACILITATION
S R V Subrahmaniam
AgileChennai
Driving Agility in a Hybrid World

2. SPEAKER’S PROFILE
 S R V Subrahmaniam – Subbu has led and
has been a part of large Enterprise level
Agile transformation engagements in Ford
IT, Edgeverve (Infosys Finacle), Bank of
New York Mellon, Royal Bank of Scotland &
Fed Ex. One of the early adopters of SAFe,
he has been a SAFe Program Consultant
from March 2015.
 He has a strong background in software
development and delivery in Siemens.
 Apart from Agile coaching and training, he
is into OKR consulting as well. Objectives
and Key results is a goal setting framework
promoting focus, alignment and tracking
within organizations.

3. WHAT IS YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH
ONLINE MEETINGS

4. DOES THIS
SOUND
FAMILIAR?
You are facilitating a Sprint
Planning meeting
1. Most of the participants are
with Videos off
2. Very little feedback /
participation
3. You are talking all the time

5. WHY IS THIS?
Online meetings makes participants feel Vulnerable
What does it mean?
exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed,
either physically or emotionally.
This emotional background provokes a defensive
reaction from the participants and a grossly sub-optimal
participation and outcome thereon.

6. SCARF MODEL
SCARF stands for the five key "domains" that
influence our behavior in social situations. This
was developed by David Rock in 2008
1. Status: How important or valued do you feel?
2. Certainty : How much clarity is there in a given
situation?
3. Autonomy: How much control you have in a
particular situation?
4. Relatedness: How connected and close do you
feel to people around you?
5. Fairness: How balanced and equal does a
given situation feel?

7. CAN WE SEE HOW
THESE CAN BE
IMPROVED BY
THE FACILITATOR
else…
There is going to be withdrawal,
boredom or frustration affecting the
participants

8. GETTING BETTER AT
1. STATUS
Status: How important or valued do you feel?
In other words “our relative importance to
others”
How does the facilitator enable that
-Getting everyone to share their inputs….that’s
easy.
-Key is: Impact of virtual meetings on
psychological safety — people feeling they can
raise questions, concerns, and ideas without
fear of personal repercussion.
-How do you create this online?

9. WHICH ONE IS BETTER, IN A
RETROSPECTIVE MEETING?
Facilitator goes round the
table asking for their
thoughts / feedback
OR

10. DOING IT IN
AN ONLINE
TOOL

11. WHY IS THE STICKY
OPTION BETTER
(ONLINE OR OFFLINE)
It is anonymous. Gives a safety shield to
express contrarian opinion
Introverts may also feel easy to contribute
Gives a level playing field to express views
immaterial of seniority / verbal strength

12. OTHER WAYS TO IMPROVE
• Using hand raise function for feedback
•Anonymous online polls
•Yes/No feedback for each participant
•Having deep discussions in a breakout room as against
in a large room

13. GETTING
BETTER AT 2.
CERTAINTY
Certainty: our ability to control / predict the
future
Is the meeting going on track? Or is it going
around in circles?
Participants feel tired / distracted / frustrated
How does the facilitator moderates to
-Respect timebox
-Moderate discussions going out of hand
-Use breaks
-Have a visual summary at all times
-Use energizers as needed

14. YOU HAVE A MEETING WHERE YOU
EXPECT BAD NEWS. HOW DO YOU
MAKE IT SAFE?
On track Under Control Need support
•[Text]
•[Text]
Create a visual board for participants to add entries early in the
meeting / or ahead of the meeting

15. VISUAL SUMMARY FOR A BACKLOG
REFINEMENT SESSION
Questions Disagree /
Concerns
Further discussion
needed
Not sure

16. USE VISUAL TEMPLATES AND
TOOLS EFFECTIVELY
1. Use Visual templates for say,
road mapping or product
visioning or retrospectives.
2. Miro /Mural / Sessionlabs
has variety of templates
3. Use Slack / Trello / Teams
on purpose

17. PREPARING FOR MEETINGS
1. Circulate agenda in advance
2. Circulate pre-reads
3. Get one participant to prepare
discussion notes (to be shared in the
beginning of the meeting) as everyone
might not be fully on board
4. Move on when discussions go on and on
5. Record and replay the key agreements at
all times
6. Publish decisions immediately.

18. KNOW WHAT
KIND OF
MEETING YOU
ARE
FACILITATING

19. GETTING BETTER AT 3.
AUTONOMY
Autonomy: our sense of control over events?
How does the facilitator enable that
-Do not micro-manage
-Get different members to volunteer to prepare
discussion notes prior to the meeting
-Create working agreements for team discussions. People
can drop off meetings if they do not see it as valuable
-How is decision making happening in the team?

20. TEAM DECISION MAKING MODELS
1. Team leader decides and informs the team
 Product Manager choosing a Business context
speaker in PI Planning meeting
2. Team leader gathers input from team then
decides
 PM / PO prioritizing the backlog
3. Consensus decisions
 PI objectives / Sprint goals
4. Consensus with a fallback
 PI objectives – few move into uncommitted if there is
uncertainty
5. Team leader sets constraints and delegates
decisions to team members
 Choosing design options
6. Majority decision
https://hr.mit.edu/learning-

21. GETTING BETTER AT 4.
RELATEDNESS
Relatedness: connected and close do you feel to people around
you?
How does the facilitator enable that
-Set-up warm-up games / exercises for the participants to know
each other well.
-Use check-in questions (open ended / light weight questions to
initiate meetings)
-Take care to “integrate” new-comers within the team. Pairing /
Mentoring
-For large groups like SAFe ART - create events prior to PI

22. GETTING BETTER AT 5.
FAIRNESS
Fairness: how fair we perceive the exchanges between
people to be.?
Take this context:
You are facilitating a meeting where a few are present in
a physical room and few have joined remotely. How do
you ensure that members who have joined remotely are
not left out

23. HOW DO WE
TRANSPARENTLY
COLLECT AND
EVALUATE IDEAS
- Like collecting retrospective feedback and say
prioritizing features
1. Make it visual – use templates for the purpose, with
Mural or Miro or Sessionlabs
2. Use lightweight mechanisms to display opinion
3. Use dot voting to get feedback on ideas
4. Make it anonymous
5. Have a mechanism to evaluate. For instance WSJF is
a transparent prioritisation process, bringing in
objectivity while giving importance to structured
discussion

24. PRE-
POPULATE
NAMES TO
GET
FEEDBACK

25. WHAT KIND OF
MEETINGS ENHANCE
THE VULNERABILITIES
1. Large group meetings
2. Roving agenda with lots of scope for surprises
3. Long meetings enhance distractions
4. Lack of familiarity between participants
5. Inviting everyone for the meeting. Getting unrelated people make
genuine participants go mute. Non serious participants also come
in with “finding faults”
6. Meetings which have history of derailed agenda will have lesser
participation
7. A few powerful people talking all the time, taking decisions,
shooting off ideas

26. USE OPEN ENDED /
ACTION ORIENTED
PHRASES
- Do you see any potential issues with
Shyam’s suggestion?
- What comes to your mind when you
think of this?
Or when crafting the meeting invite
- Root cause analysis for the server failure
issue
- Evaluate next best steps for the server
failure issue

27. LIGHTEN THE
ATMOSPHERE
- Like while participants wait for others to
join – Can we play some funny videos
which make us smile?
- Can someone display their skills – like
singing, ventriloquism etc.,?
- Or solve today’s wordle

28. DISCUSSIONS
& Thank You!