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26 Mar 2018

Agile Coach Toolkit #4: Effective Facilitation

As an Agile Coach, you frequently encounter situations which demand quick thinking to get things moving in the right direction. Over time I have found few techniques which come out handy and always keep these in my playbook in case need arise. This is the fourth part in the series of tools that I have found useful in my role as Agile Coach – Effective Facilitation.

Purpose – As a Scrum Master, you will need to facilitate Scrum events, decision making, conflict resolution and other critical discussions. This will require some preparation and deliberation to ensure the goals are met.

Description – Facilitation is needed to ensure that the group works cooperatively and effectively. As a Scrum Master, you will need to take care of a few aspects to help meet the goal(s) of the discussion. Tips for effective facilitation are listed below –

  1. Ensure that everyone participating in the discussion understand its purpose. You would need to set the context at the beginning and may have to reiterate once in a while when you see that the discussions are digressing from the context.
  2. Working agreement at the beginning will help. E.g., mobile/ electronics usage, punctuality, participant expectations, etc. Listing the Scrum values, especially if you are going to deal with conflict resolution may help the discussion.
  3. If the event/ meeting is not interactive, you may want to spend some time take some time to find the root cause.
  4. Create a safe environment for people to speak by ensuring that people focus on task at hand rather than pointing fingers. Immediately interject if there are any personal attacks.
  5. Use Timeboxing to ensure that discussions are productive.
  6. Balance the discussions so that introverts feel included in the discussions.
  7. As a facilitator, you need to read the mood in the room to take breaks at regular intervals to keep the energy level high for productive discussion.
  8. Be neutral in your stance and do not take sides (beware of your implicit bias during heated discussions)

Have you used this technique in coaching your team? If yes, please share your story.

References –

Agile Coaching – Rachel Davies, Liz Sedley

Scrum Insights for Practitioners – Hiren Doshi

Scrum roles

03 May 2016 - 1

The various levels of Services in the 3 Scrum Roles

The 3 Scrum Roles are:

  • The Product Owner
  • The Scrum Master
  • The Development team

The various levels of services in the Scrum roles are:

  • Scrum Master serves the Development Team
  • Development Team serves the Product Owner
  • Product Owner serves the stakeholders.

The accountability of the the various roles are:

  • Product Owner is accountable for the value being delivered.
  • Scrum Master is accountable for building High performing Scrum Teams by ruthlessly removing impediments and facilitating Development Team decisions. And the best way a Scrum Master can remove impediments is to empower/teach/coach the Development Team to remove them themselves. Only if the team is stuck the Scrum Master removes the impediments himself.
  • Development Team manages itself and is accountable to build a releasable increment of software that adheres to their agreed ‘Done’ at the end of every sprint