We can no longer afford to work independently of eachother. In order for teams to deliver great outcomes we need to collaborate. Agile encourages collaboration via many different workshops. But, running these workshops can be hard. In order to ensure we don’t waste time, we need a strong facilitator.
Today, I want to share with you some of the tips and techniques that I have learnt over the years when it comes to running great collaborative workshops. We will go through some of the key Agile workshops: Project Inceptions, Product Backlog Refinement, Story Kickoffs, Retrospectives and more. You too can learn the art to facilitating great collaborative workshops.
5. The Agile Manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it. Through this we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right,
we value the items on the left more.
11. Reading documentation ≠ shared understanding
Communicationeffectiveness
Richness of communication
Reading a
document /
stories
Refer to this article featuring @TotherAlistair: http://bit.ly/agilecomms
12. Talking to people = shared understanding
Communicationeffectiveness
Richness of communication
Refer to this article featuring @TotherAlistair: http://bit.ly/agilecomms
Face to face
conversation
Face to face at a
whiteboard
25. Retrospective Prime Directive
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand
and truly believe that everyone did the best job
they could, given what they knew at the time,
their skills and abilities, the resources available,
and the situation at hand.”
28. How you can facilitate
great collaborative workshops
1 Preparation
Encourage appropriate
behaviours
Facilitate with
intent
Engagement from
everyone
3
2
4
I sometimes feel like workshops are a waste of time. I sometimes wonder if we’re really doing real work in workshops. Do you feel the same?
Talk about the art of facilitating great collaborative workshops. My hope is that workshops are not only time spent really wisely, but we do a lot of great work together.
SEEK – Personalise a Message (PAM)
Background
I was working with a small team at SEEK to develop a new product – the ability for recruiters to target candidates and send a personalised message We wanted to release as quickly as possible to test whether the new product would be a success.
What did we do? What is the Purpose?
Started with Project Inception – 3 days – entire development team (Product Manager, Business Analyst, Developers, Testers).
Every one was there from the start and gained a lot of context together. Build their shared understanding of the project together.
This is the one of the purpose’s of Inceptions.
The other purpose is to go from an idea or business case to a project plan and to delivery as quickly as possible.
Why was it successful?
As I mentioned, we did this in 3 days and really they were 3 half days. 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. We started very initial development and setup the next week.
How did we do this?
Everyone was there. There was no repeating of questions. Going over context again. Everyone responsible for delivery was there.
The other was a tip that I want to share with you that worked really well.
SEEK – Personalise a Message (PAM)
Talk through what was covered in the Inception.
How all of these activities got us to starting development soon. This was real work. It was hard work.
SEEK – Personalise a Message (PAM)
There were actually two things:
A visible agenda that I walked the team through each time we go back together.
A set time of when to get back from breaks. I noticed that people are not great at turning up on time for meetings or workshops, so I thought I’d try something out.
Tell story of the timebox.
SEEK – Personalise a Message (PAM)
Background
Continuing on from the same project incepted, we began to look at the requirements for each Story in detail. I used what I called a Story Card Workshop for this.
Very similar to the Three Amigos catchup or Backlog Grooming.
What did we do? What is the Purpose?
In order for the team to quickly get a shared understanding of the work at a detailed level, I ran Story Card Workshops an Iteration or 2 ahead of starting development. At this point in the project, we were in a short Iteration 0.
These sessions looked to look into the Story Card and understand what the Acceptance Criteria was by defining it together as a team.
Why was it successful?
This proved to be very successful as the team quickly understood what we were building it and why. The team delivered the project on time and delivery far beyond what was expected.
Monash – Course Transfers
Talk about Sprint Goal
UniSuper – Member Connect
Background
Currently working as a Business Analyst at UniSuper. Large re-platforming project for their member portal.
What did we do? What is the Purpose?
It’s easy to forget the purpose of Standup when we do them day in, day out. The purpose is to help the team plan on a daily basis.
We do this by talking about what we did yesterday and what we’re doing today.
One thing that has helped is as the facilitator of the Standup, realising that it’s OK to ask questions. This is something I didn’t always do…
SUNCORP – LMS – Story about how I used to get frustrated about not following standup where everyone has their turn and ask all questions afterwards. Didn’t have the opportunity to ask questions.
In saying that, you need to learn when to say when to say – Take the discussion offline.
Re-iterate each point.
End with… Hopefully you have learnt a few different tips and techniques that will help you to now run great collaborative workshops.