Facilitation is the art of helping a group of people reach agreement or understanding, without direct involvement in the process itself. In the game of Scrum, facilitation is explicitly required in the events of Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. In addition, we would expect facilitation to be part of Product Backlog Refinement and whenever the opportunity arises.
Facilitators need:
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- Empathy
- Patience
- To stay Neutral – you’re there to make sure that your group reach their own conclusions
- Active Listening Skills
- Understanding of Group Dynamics (see the Groan Zone picture)
- …and perhaps PhD 👩🏽🎓 in Behavioural Psychology
A good facilitator will always have an agenda or plan for an event. A great facilitator will allow the plan to float out the window and adlib if the group needs it.
Resource Links:
- Developing Facilitation Skills
- Facilitation Tools for Meetings and Workshop
- How can active participation in meetings be encouraged?
- Review your meeting performance and drive change
- The Role of a Facilitator
- When, Why and How Facilitation Skills Help Scrum Teams
Remote Teams
- 7 Concrete Ways to Improve Collaboration in Remote or Distributed Scrum Teams
- 67 – Meeting Facilitation Tips For Virtual Teams
Tools List
- Virtual Collaboration tools – a massive list of options
Facilitation Books:
- Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making – Sam Kaner
- Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders – Jean Tabaka
- Where the Action Is: The Meetings That Make or Break Your Organization – J. Elsie Keith
See Also:
Mark Levison has been helping Scrum teams and organizations with Agile, Scrum and Kanban style approaches since 2001. From certified scrum master training to custom Agile courses, he has helped well over 8,000 individuals, earning him respect and top rated reviews as one of the pioneers within the industry, as well as a raft of certifications from the ScrumAlliance. Mark has been a speaker at various Agile Conferences for more than 20 years, and is a published Scrum author with eBooks as well as articles on InfoQ.com, ScrumAlliance.org an AgileAlliance.org.
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