Workshop ideas for large group - Agile/Scrum
Hi Everyone,
I'm currently looking for ideas and suggestions for an upcoming workshop I have been asked to lead at a company conference.
Just to set the scene, the company is in a relatively early stage of adopting agile ways of working. I am due to join the company soon as an agile coach (and i'm really excited to get started).
They have an upcoming conference that will be attended by a lot of key members of the business and have an afternoon set aside to run an agile workshop, they have asked me to lead the workshop.
There will be around 250 people attending!
I'm looking for a really engaging and fun workshop to run, everyone attending will be sitting at tables, so that's an easy way to split them into groups.
Everyone in attendance already understands the basic principles of agile/scrum, but we need something that will re-energise them and get everyone excited.
Some themes I already had in mind are : Team working, transparency, celebrating failure, psychological safety or maybe something along the lines of constantly inspecting and adapting.
If anyone has any ideas or similar experiences for a workshop that would work I would be really interested to hear about it.
Thanks everyone :-)
As an Agile Coach, I have been conducting Agile Workshops around the world since 2010 and here is one workshop style that works for me. Aside from dividing the 250 people into separate groups (Scrum Teams), I suggest also dividing the workshop into two time frames as well, representing two separate Sprints. Since the assumption is that the audience knows Scrum, they should be able to self-organize. I would create a hypothetical market challenge and allow the Scrum Teams to come up with solutions. For example, a fast-growing city has a mandate to reduce pollution within the next 3 months, what would you do as a Scrum Team in this city? The Scrum Teams would have POs to try and come up with solutions. Throw in some "controversial issues" as well into the picture. For example, there would be a developer who is annoying and non-cooperative to the Scrum Team. The Scrum Teams in your workshop would have Development Team members and a Scrum Master to try and solve these issues as well.
See what happens in the first half of the workshop. Allow the Scrum Teams to do restrospectives on white boards or large pieces of paper. You walk around and try to see how things are going - maybe even participate as well in some groups and throw in more controversial issues into the equation! Start the second half of the workshop and see if the Scrum Teams are showing lessons learned from the retro (e.g. practicing more Scrum Values, practicing time-box in meetings, etc.). I think that the most important thing in conducting a Scrum Workshop is that the audience (large or small) somehow experiences the challenges, advantages, and even disadvantages of Scrum. There will definitely be a lot of questions from the audience at the end of the workshop - some very tough ones! I suggest that you just stick to the Scrum Guide and answer as coherently as possible. If you are tongue-tied and can't answer, it is better to be honest and say that you don't know the answer. You could even refer the audience to this Scrum.org forum. Maybe the answers to their questions are right here!
RJ Macasaet - Thanks so much for the idea, can you provide any more details on how to run the workshop?
For example, once the group have been split into the smaller scrum teams and the first sprint begins, what activities will the participants be doing?
Hi @Dan Metcalfe. Could you tell me what did u do for this workshop ? Many thanks :)