Conference
The Art of Facilitating Retrospectives [And Other Team Events]
There is plenty of material available in agility for facilitating meetings and retrospectives. Yet, most of it is providing workshop formats, exercises and activities and fails to present the actual attitude of the facilitator: how do I work with groups, how do I manage group dynamics properly? In this presentation I will show what are the important aspects of the facilitator‘s attitude and practical tips on how to facilitate several team situations. Facilitation is not just about formats: learn the attitude and the craft of the facilitator!
Target Audience: Developers, Scrum Masters, Product Owner, Managers, Project Managers
Prerequisites: Basic experience in facilitating retrospectives and meetings where co-operation is a key element
Level: Practicing
You will learn:
- Understand the facilitation role
- Understand how the facilitator's stance has an impact on the way the team performs
- Learn some important tips on facilitation
- Understand how the facilitation of a retrospective differs from the facilitation of other scrum activities and meetings in general
Extended Abstract:
There is plenty of material available in agility for facilitating meetings and, in particular, retrospectives. Yet, most of it is providing workshop formats, exercises and activities and, in my experience, fails to present the actual attitude of the facilitator: how do I work with groups, how do I manage group dynamics properly? Which stances are helping my team to achieve results and which are actually impeding this?
In this presentation I will show what I believe are the important aspects of the facilitator's attitude and some very much practical tips on how to facilitate several team situations.
The content comes from my study of professional facilitations and my practical experience in using them "on the field". I have collected all the many years of experience on this topic in a book that I am currently finalising.
Some of the topics I will discuss are:
- How the format of the retrospective impacts the response of the team
- The setting of the room: what's the best? How does it influence a retrospective?
- How do I frame the activities so that they are properly understood by the participants?
- How to un-stuck a team that cannot decide
- How to organise work in sub-groups (when needed)
- How to deal with timeboxes: when do they help, when do they disturb
- Learn to interact properly with the team and use the "offers" they spontaneously make
- Learn the dynamics of a group decision and how to support it