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Facilitation Fundamentals

How to use facilitation on practiceBy Svetlana Mukhina

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Introduction

Svetlana MukhinaICAgile ICP, ICP-ATF, ICP-BVA, PSM I, CSPO

Agile and Career Coach at Luxoft Agile Practice

Experience: 12+ years in IT, Project and department management, Computer Linguistics, Technical Writing, Quality Assurance

Interests: Project management, Agile transformation, Career and performance coaching, Psychology

Hobbies: Horse riding, music, poker, travelling

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Session Plan Learning objectives

What is facilitation and who is facilitator Agile Facilitator

Warmup to brake the Ice Brainwriting to gather ideas World-café to explore opinions Five and fist to evaluate opportunities Pro-Con analysis to make a decision Meeting minutes to summarize and define next steps Recommended materials Agile Team Facilitation training Agile Practice services

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Facilitation, Facilitator, Agile Facilitator

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Facilitation and Facilitator Manual and automated mode

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Facilitation and Facilitator Stop working

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Facilitation and Facilitator Self-organizing flow

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Agile Team Facilitator Treasure Agile Values

Follow Agile Principles

Master Facilitation Techniques

Team Facilitat

orAgile Guard

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Techniques on Practice

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Warmupto Brake the Ice

What• Short informal sharing of personal facts.

e.g. about your weekend

Why

• In order to find out more about the people you work with and to create open atmosphere

When • On Monday, before standup, Planning,

Product Backlog Refinement session

Time• 5 min for a team of 8-10 people

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Warmup

Gather your team A team member come in front and says

what she/he did during the weekend If anyone did something similar this

person/people come to the speaker and hive him/her high-five

Then the next person does similar actions, in turn all team members should share their weekend experience

Use on practice Tip: use warm-up while waiting all

participant to join the meeting

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Brainwriting To gather ideas

What• Brainwriting is used to gather ideas on individual basis

Why• In order everybody think about the question/problem and has a

chance to contribute a solution

When

• When it is necessary to gather all opinions and ideas for discussion. Whenever you see that only a few participants are active, while you need all the team to be involved

Time• 10 min for a team of 8-10 people

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Brainwriting

Define a case for opinion gathering, e.g. necessity of auto-tests on the project (possible improvements for next Sprint, responsibilities with Scrum team, etc.)

Provide stickers and pens to the group Ask everybody to write 2 pro and 2 contra

opinions on auto-testing. One opinion per a sticker

Gather ideas or ask participants to put ideas to “ideas box”

Use on practice Tip: In case someone has problem with ideas

generation, ask them to focus on the task and avoid doing side-activities (mobile use, whispering with neighbors). Ideas will come for sure, if remain thinking on the issue. There can be more and less productive periods during brainwriting.

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World-CaféTo Explore Opinions

What

• The technique is used to explore various ideas in groups during a reasonable time-box

Why

• It helps to get familiar with lots of ideas and enrich your understanding of the issue

When

• In case there are lot’s of options to explore or one, but very complex option

Time • 20 min for a team of 12-14 people

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World-Café

Define a topic for discussion In our case it is necessity of auto-testing on the project

Ask participants to form group of 3-5 people Each group discuss the topic

In our case people share their pro/con ideas Each group has 4-5 min for discussion When you say “Go”, people switch tables, remaining one of

them to welcome the coming group. The host should be chosen by participants on voluntary basis

Continue the exercise till all groups are at default tables, give them 5 min more to share the ideas they heard with their host

Use on practice

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Five-to-FistTo Evaluate Opportunities

What • It is a group voting procedure

Why• To understand distribution

of voices for/against idea in a team

When • Whenever a evaluation is necessary

Time • 1-5 min. depending on quantity of evaluating items

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Five-to-FistUse on practice

Speak aloud some idea/suggestion In our case it is a benefit or disadvantage of auto-

testing for the project Ask participants to vote for it using fingers Write down voting results for the idea

E.g. auto-testing will reduces manual work, 3 people voted with 4 fingers, 1 with fist (zero), 3 with 2 = 18

Calculate the champion In our case the biggest disadvantage and the best

benefit

Tip: use this approach to see the distribution in voices, when there is no 100% “yes” and “no” answers.

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Pro-con AnalysisTo make a decision

What • Decision-making mechanism

Why• To summarize evaluated

information, to visualize decision-making for all team members

When • Whenever there is distribution in opinions over an idea/issue

Time • 5-10, depending on quantity of items

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Pro-con Analysis

• Auto-testing is executed by tools, so it is faster than a manual approach 16

• It is more accurate and reliable 12

• Anyone can rut auto-tests 12

• Auto-tests can be re-used 11

51

Use on practice

• Investment is required for testing frameworks, cost, time 12

• It can’t help to improve usability 10

• Auto-test should be kept up-to-date on regular basis 18

• It requires accuracy of test data 6

46

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Meeting MinutesTo summarize and define next steps

What• Summary on meeting decisions, way

forward, action items

Why• To summarize decision(s), share

information with all interested parties, integrate meeting results on practice

When • During or at the end of a meeting

Time • 5-10

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Meeting MinutesUse on practice

What Who When

Setup next meeting on our progress with auto-testing implementation Mike by Aug 21

Investigate popular frameworks, present the results Ann by Aug 28

Explore company trainings on auto-testing, share info Olga by Aug 28

Discuss auto-testing experience on other project within the company, summarize it for our team Mike by Sep 05

Identify critical parts of our app to cover in first turn Alex and Ivan By Sep 05

Present our approach on auto-testing to stakeholders Mike By Sep 11

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Meeting Structure The designed flow

warmup brainwriting

world-café

five-to-fist

pro-con analysis

meeting minutes

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Recommended Materials Recordings and presentations of my webinars on facilitation: How to facilitate product backlog refinement sessionshttps

://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recording-webinar-how-facilitate-product-backlog-svetlana How to facilitate meetings, Scrum events and group discussions https

://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-facilitate-meetings-scrum-events-group-svetlana Agile Team Facilitator Mindset & Behaviourhttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recording-webinar-agile-team-facilitator-mindset-

svetlana Facilitation and Facilitator Stancehttps://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recording-webinar-facilitation-facilitator-stance-svetlana The Power on Visualizationhttps

://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141202230246-48371619-follow-up-on-the-webinar-the-power-on-visualization Designing Meetings for Collaboration https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-required-effective-collaboration-svetlana  Silent voting technique https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140415193826-48371619-easy-way-to-make-a-discussion-

effective Facilitating decision-making and feedback gathering https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/decisions-valued-feedback-remembered-

svetlana

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Way Forward – ICAgile Agile Team Facilitation

ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Team Facilitation 

Details - https://icagile.com/icp-agile-team-facilitation

Registration ­ For Luxoft employees

https://inthr.luxoft.com/IntHRWebApp/aspx_PTC/CreateRequestInternal.aspx?Course=SDP-035

­ For non-Luxoft – email me smukhina@luxoft.com

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Available Services of Agile Practice ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Fundamentals https://icagile.com/icagile-certified-professional 

ICAgile Certified Professional - Business Value Analysis https://icagile.com/icp-business-value-analysis 

ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Team Facilitation https://icagile.com/icp-agile-team-facilitation 

Professional Scrum Master https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Master 

Custom Workshops:• Coaching and self-coaching;• Agile project management;• Agile project metrics;• Motivation models;• Feedback gathering;• etc.

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Personal Coaching in Facilitation

If you need assistance with meeting design, structure, facilitation, you can get a coaching session with me on facilitation in general or your work-case in particular.

Write me email smukhina@luxoft.com with the request

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THANK YOU