Operating on the Creative Edge: Applying Improvisation Techniques in Agile
Drawing from the art of improvisation, Agile coaches Jim York and Tobias Mayer lead this fun and fast moving session to explore healthy and innovative ways of communicating and collaborating. Many Agile teams suffer from dysfunctional interpersonal communication born of learned “bad” behaviors. These stifling exchanges keep individuals entrenched in old ideas and inhibit forward progress. In this session, Jim and Tobias share a different approach based on their experience teaching Agile teams improvisation techniques to help them find creative ways to discover and deliver customer value.
Participants will learn how to generate a collaborative space, building upon one another’s ideas in a creative and innovative fashion. They will experience the power of positive feedback, emergent design and even failure, and will understand how to heighten their own awareness and understanding during an exchange so that they can respond with agility and purpose.
We conducted a shorter version of this session at last year’s conference. The workshop was successful (we had to turn people away as it is limited to 30 participants, we had excellent participation, and we received much positive feedback). However, it was a bit rushed and only touched the surface of the benefit the exercises can have. This year we are proposing a half day session so that the topics may be more fully developed and explored by the participants.
The session format is highly interactive, exploratory and creative, with debrief discussion as appropriate. The facilitators will lead the participants through word games and other interactive games designed to facilitate group awareness, understanding, and direction. Examples include:
- The Failure Bow — an introduction to prepare for the session
- Writing a letter one word at a time
- The Story Spine — collaborative story telling using a fixed framework
- String of Pearls –- more story telling, going backwards, forwards, and from both ends to the middle.
- Arms — where one person is the arms of another as they create a story led by gesture
- Dolphin Training — positive feedback exercise
We have used the improvisational techniques and exercises proposed for this session in dozens of leadership and other agile training workshops over the past 3 years. In their written feedback, the participants in these workshops have consistently ranked these exercises among the highlights of their learning experience.
Here is a selection of comments from Agile2007 and other sessions where these exercises have been used:
- “Great session! I would like this session to be one of the 3 hour sessions. There is so much we could cover.”
- “I thought the session was great and would recommend the entire organization going through something like this. I also think it would be interesting to have more execs participate…”
- “The Failure Bow set the tone for the whole session. It was perfect!”
- “At first this felt awkward and embarrassing, but in the end I really enjoyed it. I didn’t think I’d be able to participate, so I surprised myself.”
- Loved all of it!
- “The [workshop] was most effective for its success in changing the atmosphere and the substance of communication and action […] The entire encounter unfolded outside the box, and so was alternately awkward, liberating, and fun.”
- “Style of delivery, energy, etc. were right on target.”
- “An important outcome of today’s session was…there was movement. People began talking…”