Agile Coach Toolkit #4: Effective Facilitation

(India)

March 26, 2018

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 –

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.
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.
If the event/ meeting is not interactive, you may want to spend some time take some time to find the Root Cause.
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.
Use Timeboxing to ensure that discussions are productive.
Balance the discussions so that introverts feel included in the discussions.
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.
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

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Comments (7)

Amit Kumar Singh

08:18 am March 30, 2018

Hello Puneet,

Very well written and quite crisp blog.
I have one question on below point:

"3.If the event/ meeting is not interactive, you may want to spend some time take some time to find the Root Cause."

In this point, by spending more time, we might increase chances that we will not follow Timeboxing..
In the context of spending more time, is it preparation before meeting (depending upon team members) or to have more casual interaction after event, or we can extend the timeline of the even though it will not be in-line with Timeboxing?

Best Regards,
Amit Kumar Singh

Dmitriy

05:42 am April 4, 2018

Hi Punit,
Thank you for the summary.

I use seven of eight you listed.
3) How do you use 5Ys technique during the session?
6) I practice it in the role of facilitator, e.g., on our retros. However, I found it difficult to notice not involved ones during the training sessions when I'm in the flow of interaction and teaching. Do you have any tips on that?

Thanks,
Dmitriy

Punit Doshi

06:49 pm April 27, 2018

Hi Dmitriy,

Apologies for the late reply (do not get any notifications unfortunately). Regarding Root Cause Analysis, you may want to ask probing questions like, "Did anyone notice there was something missing in what was being said?". This will get everyone's attention and will surely start some conversations.

In trainings, I usually prefer highly interactive sessions and try to cover few rounds of pop quizzes to ensure everyone speaks (if it's not a big class). Do not want any shy person to feel that he/ she is picked up often. Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Punit

Punit Doshi

06:53 pm April 27, 2018

Hi Amit,

Sorry for the late response. As a Scrum Master, you will have to find a balance between interactions and maintaining the timeboxes. Without any discussions, the team will most likely not breach the timebox. At the same time, you will need to ensure right amount of discussions happen. This may require some preparations upfront, some of it, you may need to improvise.

Thanks,
Punit

Richard Kiefer

08:58 am September 23, 2020

The five Whys technique is very helpful. Although, you need to have some intuition to follow a productive route when backtracking multi-event causes.

Regarding punctuality, I noticed that the mere "standing up" from your desk can be a smooth signal for others to get the daily scrum meeting started, especially when more and more people replicate the behavior so everyone will notice it in the room ultimately.
Similar to raising hands when ending a triad discussion session and creating silence. Does anyone know the name for this technique?

Gozde Berberoglu Özen

09:48 am January 9, 2021

Thanks fo the post. I used some of them and using some other techniques too. And I'm still learning :D

I was a speaker in a meetup, you can find my slide deck to find some useful tips and tricks here: https://www.slideshare.net/...

Thanks,
Gözde

Tom

11:30 am August 6, 2021

Hey Gozde, I like your slides! Thx