This document provides information about agile facilitation techniques. It begins with an introduction of the author and their background. The session plan outlines learning objectives about facilitation, facilitators, and designing meetings. Techniques described for designing meetings include warmups, brainwriting, world cafe, five to fist voting, pro-con analysis, and meeting minutes. Group dynamics models of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning are also discussed. Recommended materials and certification in agile team facilitation are presented at the end.

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Agile Facilitation
How to use facilitation on practice
By Svetlana Mukhina

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Introduction
Svetlana Mukhina
ICAgile 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
 Designing a Meeting
 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
 Facilitating Group Dynamics
 Recommended materials and further education

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Facilitation, Facilitator, Agile
Facilitator

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Definition of Facilitation
Facilitation
is a set of activities that helps a
group of people to understand their
common objectives and assists
them to achieve
it within a reasonable time box
and without
destructive confrontations.
Facilitator
is someone who helps a group of
people understand their common
objectives and assists them to plan
how to achieve these objectives; in
doing so, the facilitator remains
"neutral" meaning he/she does not
take a particular position in the
discussion

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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
Facilitator
Agile
Guard

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Designing a Meeting

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Meeting Structure
Designing the flow
warmup brainwriting world-café five-to-fist
pro-con
analysis
meeting
minutes

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Warmup
to 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-Café
To 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-Fist
To 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-Fist
Use 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 Analysis
To 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 Minutes
To 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 Minutes
Use on practice
What Who When
Setup next meeting on our progress with auto-testing
implementation
Mike by Aug 31
Investigate popular frameworks, present the results Ann by Sep 4
Explore company trainings on auto-testing, share info Olga by Sep 4
Discuss auto-testing experience on other project within
the company, summarize it for our team
Mike by Sep 08
Identify critical parts of our app to cover in first turn Alex and Ivan By Sep 11
Present our approach on auto-testing to stakeholders Mike By Sep 15

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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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Facilitating Group Dynamics

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Group Dynamics

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FORMING
 Unclear Goals
 Low level of commitment
 Vаgue communication flow
 Responsibility is mostly avoided
 Absence of prominent leaders
 Build a common purpose
 Identify expectations
 Encourage for leadership and motivation
 Inspire to take responsibility
 Support contribution and collaboration
Team characteristics Facilitation approaches

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STORMING
 High level of independence
 Communication gaps
 Misunderstanding
 Uncertainty
 Dysfunctional behavior
 Differences and struggles
 Reduce toxic communication
 Invite different opinions and approaches
 Recognize tolerance and loyalty
 Define ground rules
 Develop common goal
 Involve everyone in discussion
Team characteristics Facilitation approaches

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NORMING
 Confidence and clarity
 Relevance
 Defined communication flow, goals, rules, roles
 Built relations
 Understanding of interdependence
 Develop process of information sharing
 Build feedback loops
 Use sharing format frequently to track progress
 Discuss discipline distribution
 Support negotiation and consensus
Team characteristics Facilitation approaches

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PERFORMING
 Responsibility over tasks and relations
 Stable progress and results
 High level of proactivity
 Self-organization and self-facilitation
 Collaboration
 Retrospect and seek for improvements
 Celebrate success
 Test and question habitual patterns
 Evaluate results against purpose
 Remember about rules, processes and focus
Team characteristics Facilitation approaches

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ADJOURNING
 Lack of interest
 Irrelevant goals
 High level of predictability and competence
 Satisfaction
 Stability
 Increase complexity and unpredictability
 Restructure the process
 Discuss team dissolving/rotation
 Transform to network/community
 Remember success and results
Team characteristics Facilitation approaches

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Recommended Materials
 Greatest book on facilitation, applicable not only for Agile team, it’s #1 to read for any facilitator -
http://www.amazon.com/Facilitators-Guide-Participatory-Decision-Making-
Kaner/dp/0787982660
 Retromat – cookbook on Retro facilitation, they provide step-by-step scenarios for Retros
facilitation - http://plans-for-retrospectives.com
 Video to learn graphic facilitation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5DJC6LaOCI
 Post about tools (not techniques) for distributed teams
facilitation http://www.luxoft.com/blog/smukhina/tools-for-collaboration-in-distributed-teams
 Video on empathy that is one of the Servant Leader qualities -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

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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 & Behaviour https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recording-webinar-agile-team-facilitator-mindset-
svetlana
 Facilitation and Facilitator Stance https://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
Description - https://icagile.com/icp-agile-team-facilitation

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