I think this topic is coming soon in the academy. But I would not wait for this. Peter is my friend is struggling with IT knowledge improvements.
I talked with him a half hour, and during the talk I figured out lets continue this meetings every week. It could help for him to see the progress and the paint-points.
Nice starting point!
The last two days of the facilitation week we spent on the facilitation tools and how they are useful in the agile rituals.
finalizing the preparation matrix with the tools
You can get certification via many ways. I prefer the candidates work in a proper environment, so he can learn, discovery many good practices, behavior during the work, and also seeing the proper roles.
It is very good to participate in an training for one or two days. You can meet with other candidates, they have different experience and observation. We like to follow patterns, it is a very easy way to learn. Plus there are the trainers who can share many stories, examples what you can recall later during your professional activity.
Reading books is also a very good option. You can create nots, highlights the most important messages for you.
Podcasts and meetups I would recommend them to see more behind the theory.
At the end you want to get a certification. There are many ways to do it. During this pandemic it is very common to do it online.
I did a Scrum master certification in 2018, after working as agile and scrum developer for 7 years. I never thought I could bring a value for me. I did it because I started my scum master role.
Now I was interested in a Scum Developer certification. It is not so sexy certification, there are more people who has scrum master certification, but developers does not recognize a need for this.
I would recommend to the IT manager to ask their developer for going for a Scrum developer certification. They can learn a lot during the studies and recognize the best practices and recommendations.
I learn now for Product owner certification and also do studies on the Agile Coaching Academy for an agile coach certification.
It is very important to understand the group dynamics, because people are different, they have different commutation styles and these could be the basis of different interpretations and misunderstanding.
It is a group development model. The phases are:
1. Forming:
Characteristics of individual behavior: insecure, hesitation, sceptical response, dependent (management, facilitator?)
Suggestions for you as a facilitator:
2. Storming
3. Norming phase - when you become a team
Character of the individuals: more and more the team, acceptance of others in their role, confidence increase, team relaxes
suggestion for you as facilitator:
4. Performing - people are focused on tasks
Character of the individuals: focus on tasks, openness, confidence, objectives are achieved, conflicts are managed by the group
suggestion:
I would propose to share here some interesting material in facilitation topic.
I would like to share an online meetup about brainstorming. It is a well know technique, and used widely, the basis was published around 1950's.
But how to do it better?
https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/AgileHungary/events/qrvfvgybcnblb/
And I found this week a facilitation method library. There are many methods, they are described in a well defined structure.
I found very useful to learn new methods.
We created this table in the Miro. We identified the main blocks of this meeting and try to add a value for the certain axis.
For getting a common understanding on the blocks we added the small tasks of the block.
If you see the Opening block is more focused and driven by the leader. And we can see more interaction in the collecting and action plan blocks.
Agile is used for avoiding delays, they are based on quality, efficiency and misunderstandings. That's why we see it as an interaction concept.
I am in a new team. We collected together the challenges in Miro.
| Agile rituals | Who needs to be there | What is the challenge |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint planning | Scrum Team, (PO, SM, cross-functional members) | -Unclear business need -Backlog items aren't ready - Unclear expectations, roles & responsibilities (Agile foundations) -Late or missing people -Unclear ritual objective - Timebox is not respected |
| Heartbeat | Stakeholders, PO/SM VS Scrum Team (OD) | - Timebox is not respected - Unclear ritual objective - Lack of common language - Changing into ideation - No Trust - Different expectations - Timing & Location |
| Daily standup | Scrum Team (PO optional) | - Timebox not respected - Unclear ritual objective - Problem solving discussions - Power struggles - Status meeting - No pulse check (progress) |
| Sprint review | PO, scrum team, Stakeholders, Business representatives | - Timebox not respected - Unclear ritual objective - Technical problems - Misaligned expectations - Go off topic |
| Retrospective | Scrum Team (PO?, STKH) |
- Timebox not respected - Unclear ritual objective - Not sharing - No action plan (commitment) - NVC (biased) |
| Backlog Refinement | Scrum Team, Business representative, PO, expert | - Timebox not respected - Unclear ritual objective - Invite an expert - No clear goal - No conversations - Priorities being discussed - Force the team |
Today we turn back to the masterclasses in the Agile Coaching Academy.
I did not post long time ago. There were many interesting topics in fact, but I was exhausted because of getting a flue. Maybe I will post these topics later.
Arie first question was about what is the difference between a meeting and a workshop.
The first answer was, the workshop is more about doing and not just listening.
Arie also shared, that the participants during the workshop are working for an outcome.
During my several roles I love facilitation, in my interpretation to try to help to go closer to the goal.
I did it without any training, and probably it was not perfect at all. But the team members and the managers also appreciated it.
The IAF is an organization of the facilitators, they have a purpose to share and go deeper in this topic. The members of the organization could help you if you straggle in a topic. And even you can go for a certification.
We reviewed the core competencies for facilitators.
1. Create a collaborative client relationship
2. Plan appropriate group process
3. Create and sustain a participatory environment
group dynamics, techniques, interfacing:
4. Guide group to appropriate and useful outcome
Result driven, focus on the needs of the group
5. Build and Maintain professional knowledge
About you as a professional
6. Model professional attitude
About you as a professional
Agile rituals are workshops, need to be prepared.
Why?
See the objectives, the value, (hidden) agenda
What?
which tools, material, drinks, food I need
How?
When?
With whom?
With what?
Product?
In your environment which workshop is interesting? can be maybe improved?
Make a list of agile rituals, collect who should be there and what are the chalanges.
Definitely. No Question.
The Agile Manifesto contains some basic points and many principals. If you would like to say you are agile, or you are working agile, or you respect agility, than it means you follow the Agile Manifesto.
Maybe I signed the Agile Manifesto in 2011. I dont remember, and even Google does not help me now.
The agnostic agile is related more to the transformation. You or an organization works in a way and he would like to switch his process to be more based on agile principals.
By signing the Agnostic Agile, you are acknowledging the importance of an agnostic understanding of agility, and its many colorful implementations.
This week discuss all the topics of yesterday in a coaching session with out team.
My Team mates are Koen, Karan and Thilbault.
Each team member has 20 minutes to explain his status, ongoing project, thinking. The purpose is we can receive some questions are recommendation from each other.
I would just mention some key words or sentences, probably the full context is not so important.
weekly sessions for coaching people with several roles
discuss the desired roles with people and share with HR
stimulating people
working on a little experiment
safe environment, it is OK to fail
informal chats, cafe-breaks
I never participated on a coaching session like this. I never had the opportunity to be coached.
I explained my situation how I helped to introduce agile as a scrum master and developer. And then how I turned to technical coaching.
I think we find the week point of this process. Probably it was more governed by the top, and the reason was the teams did not use the opportunity to grow, they were demanding for examples, POCs, pair working with the coach, and even not proposing steps or sharing visions.
There were of course small proposals during sessions, workshops or retro meetings.
For reaching efficiency and efficient teams we need proper tools, methods and practices.
So it is important to select the proper tool for coding, sharing, collaborating with the team members.
And so important the practices: doing some dojo, kata, pair working together.
We mentioned one new thing: Mob programming, I heard about it already, but never practiced. This a session where a team deliver one user story together with one computer sharing the screen as we do on the dojo-s. But it is a real task. Very good practice to invite the business or the PO, and they can see how a feature is born.
Arie shared a big table of tools which are collected by different categories such: requirements, planning, collaboration, building, release etc.
We discussed a lot what we think about the importance of the tools. Maybe business coaches ask the help of the technical coaches. I would also recommend them to subscribe to a tech radar reports, and they will be frequently updated by the new or become standard tools.
create your tool list, and what do you do for an insight on tooling.
I followed this week an online meetup with Erich R. Buhler, the topic was learning new tools.
I would like to share his diagram about the agility levels, he called Extreme business agility.
And What an evident and useful view this! I really love it. During the projects and also during the academy sessions we mention several times few element of this diagram, but I never see this before in one overview.
The key message I think for the coaches, that they have to prepare and overview the agility in many level in an organization.
and keep the organization healthy
I left here the first topic of the meeting.
Do you struggle to move people? He identifies these levels for individuals.
Probably we can find more details in his blog and book: "Leading Exponential Change: Go beyond Agile and Scrum to run even better business transformations".
https://en.innova1st.com/2019/12/11/dealing-with-psychopaths-during-agile-change/