Agile methods demand high degree of collaboration and self-organization within a team and team-of-teams. A key difference between agile and traditional software development is the adoption of group facilitation techniques by agile practitioners. Agile teams need to possess effective ways of sharing information and making decisions together. Hence facilitation has become a scrum master’s or an agile coach’s most important responsibility. “facilitation” is any activity that makes tasks for others easy. The success of a scrum master or an agile coach depends a largely on her team facilitation skills. She has to facilitate (and of course, prepare well for) the agile ceremonies like release planning, iteration/ sprint planning, reviews or demo, retrospectives, etc.
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Much like an orchestra's conductor, a scrum master is responsible for ensuring the scrum team is aligned, working synchronously, and harmoniously communicating with each other throughout product development to get the work done and done right. Explore the scrum master's responsibility as facilitator and learn how they can guide effective team behavior and enable positive sprint outcomes. Then, investigate some effective facilitation techniques, including how to welcome discussion of uncomfortable issues and provide relevant information to stakeholders. Then, learn how divergent and convergent thinking are two complementary ways of investigating ideas, working towards goals, and addressing challenges. Find out how to facilitate groups with varying, sometimes conflicting perspectives.
So what is facilitation?
1. Participatory - scrum teams are self-managing with a mix of skills and capabilities. Each sprint they develop a sprint goal and have a shared responsibility to deliver an increment of customer value each and every sprint. This requires all the scrum team members to be involved in scrum events and have a say. People will buy into a shared goal they have developed in preference to a goal that was forced upon them. 2. Healthy - facilitation should create a safe space for people to be heard and have robust discussion. People should feel safe to raise conflicting perspectives and opinions.
For some reason, for many the essence of the scrum master role boils down to: “remove impediments for the team” or “is responsible for the scrum process”. Others declare that “the scrum master is a kind of a pmo”, or “a facilitator for the team”. Not that it is not part of the scrum master role – but it certainly is not the essence. Furthermore, such statements are demeaning, in my view. Strong word, and yet, making statements such as the above, to me, indicates that the speaker may not yet understand what agility really means. And please don’t get me wrong – it’s not that i think that facilitation is something to look down at.
As a scrum master, you want to grow your knowledge of facilitation and coaching, two of the core competencies of the role. Click through to explore articles and webinars on various subjects to help your csm journey. This collection is part of a larger collection worth 20 seus that's designed to help you renew your csm certification. Stay connected.
Moderation oder facilitation ist als methode in den 70er jahren des letzten jahrhunderts entstanden und damals diente sie vor allem der bemühung, alle im raum mit gleichen rechten zu versehen, was das sprechen angeht. Schauen wir auf die heutigen meetings, besprechungen und workshops, so hat sich kaum etwas verändert. Die “stillen” beteiligten sagen eher weniger, die “lauten” dominieren das gespräch. Wie kannst du das in deiner facilitatoren-rolle ändern? lass uns vor allem über die haltung des moderators sprechen. A fool with a tool is still a fool. Es nützen uns also weder neue methoden noch das virtuelle konfetti. In der rolle des facilitators geht es darum, der gruppe durch ein gespräch eine lösungssuche oder eine entscheidung möglich zu machen.