Collaboration Explained--Tools for Facilitating Real Agile Teams
Very often, Agile initiatives begin with a concentration on either engineering practices or an executive edict. Somewhere in the middle, the Agile team is left to figure out how to absorb these practices and edicts. That means resolving what tools to use to consistently and reliably create and sustain the close interactions, participatory decision-making, and consensus driven results that support the success of the Agile initiative. In my experiences with Agile teams worldwide, I’ve discovered that teams lack fundamental tools for building these truly collaborative cultures.
In this 90-minute tutorial, I offer a very specific set of tools (agendas, brainstorming approaches, consensus-building, inspection, action planning, etc.) for use by Agile team leaders and their teams to not only jump start their self-organization; these tools support practices that ensure a continued and growing collaborative Agile team. In presentation and exercises, I will guide participants in:
A. What is a collaborative versus command-and-control culture for Agile? (This will include a brainstorming exercise to teach several fundamental components of good brainstorming: how to set up the brainstorming; what tools to bring to the brainstorming; how to timebox a brainstorming; what to do with the data from a brainstorming; what NOT to do in a brainstorming)
B. What specific tools guide the focus of Agile team events? (This introduces basic tools around timeboxing, information radiators, action plans, parking lots, decision boards, communication plans, team agreements, agendas, purpose statements.)
C. What tools help teams focus on their decisions and in their iterations? (This concentrates on the Daily Standup: how to have very effective focused standups and how to manage dysfunctional standups; what to do with the information and decisions that emerge from standups. How to use action planning and daily commitments in the Standups.)
D. What specific tools can we use to get the greatest wisdom of the team in any team meetings? (Here, I concentrate on participatory decision-making tools: brainstorming, listing, grouping, prioritizing, and gaining consensus. This will be a quick listing of tools.)
E. What specific agendas can guide our release planning, iteration planning, daily meetings, and review meetings? (This is an exercise where groups of participants work on creating an agenda for one of the four types of meetings listed. We will debrief about the results and I will provide my own standard set of agendas I use as a starting point for any of these Agile staple meetings.)
F. How do we inspect and adapt our tool set? (I will close the tutorial by adding a fifth agenda, the Retrospective meeting and will then actually conduct a retrospective on the tutorial with the entire group to provide an example of a quick, objective retrospective.)
My agenda gives the complete layout of what I will present as well as the exercises. Because of the time limit (90 minutes), I will probably only do 2 full exercises with participants working in small teams, and a 3rd exercise with all of us together. Based on feedback from reviewers, I have scaled back my topics, concentrated on specific material and ensured that I will have the 3 exercises.
I am passionate about this topic and its value because of the many teams I have seen struggle with Agile. Simple items like putting a meeting agenda on the wall has made a huge difference in helping these teams be more focused and more collaborative. Engaging in real brainstorming and in consensus-building has also been an eye opener for teams I have work with that are trying to be self-organizing. My goal in this 90-minutes is to have participants walk out of the tutorial with an explicit set of tools they can take back to their teams. Each agenda item has specifics about team work, team decision making, and team focus in all the planning and work that must occur collaboratively in Agile software development.
Don’t be fooled! This is not fluffy stuff! This is real tools! Also, to be clear, I am not selling any software tools or promoting any software solutions as tools for collaboration. My collaboration tool set is around information radiators, agendas, sticky notes, dialogues, flipcharts, and good facilitation techniques.