Photo by Duy Pham
Unlock Your Team’s Potential with Working Agreements
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Facilitation Techniques
Facilitation Technique: Validation
Validation is when the facilitator acknowledges the validity of a participant’s position. The facilitator is not necessarily endorsing the viewpoint, but simply recognizing that the viewpoint is reasonable and understandable for the participant to hold.
It can be tricky for a facilitator to acknowledge thoughts of participants and help them feel heard without agreeing with what the participant is saying. Validation takes practice and can help earn the trust of your team when done well.
Read the full article…
Facilitation Technique: Writing First
Writing first is a facilitation technique where participants collect their thoughts in writing before having a discussion. This allows more participation from those that need time to gather their thoughts or feel more comfortable expressing themselves in writing. The facilitator will set a time period for silent writing, then participants share their thoughts once the writing time is up.
Read the full article…
Facilitation Technique: Stacking
What Is Stacking
Stacking is a facilitation technique which ensures that everyone’s voice is heard. The facilitator acknowledges each person who wants to contribute and establishes an order in which they will share. The result is that each person knows when their turn is and that they won’t be forgotten.
Facilitation Technique: Questions for Elaboration
In this third part of our facilitation techniques series, we’re using questions for elaboration to encourage further conversation.
Read the full article…
Facilitation Technique: Mirroring
In part two of our facilitation techniques series, we’ll practice mirroring: what it is and when to use it for effective facilitation.
Read the full article…
Facilitation Technique: Paraphrasing
Looking for techniques for effective facilitation? In this first part of our facilitation techniques series, we’ll dive into paraphrasing: what it is and how to use it.
Read the full article…
Nominal Group Technique For Working Agreements
Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is a facilitation tool that helps a group quickly build a comprehensive list of ideas, issues, options or solutions, and then select the best one(s). NGT works faster than traditional brainstorming, yet generates more complete and higher quality results. NGT prevents the quieter voices from being overwhelmed and allows each participant to contribute to their full potential.
The Nominal Group Technique was developed in the 1970’s by Andre Delbecq and Andrew H. Van de Ven. The effectiveness of NGT has been validated by subsequent research.
Let’s see how NGT can be used by a scrum team to create working agreements for their scrum events and other meetings. Such agreements are often called meeting ground rules.
Read the full article…
How To Create A Definition Of Done
A scrum team’s definition of done helps them continuously add value to the product and avoid backsliding or breaking things. When a product meets the definition of done, new value is available and the stakeholders can access the value whenever they choose. One way to think about the definition of done, is as a checklist that helps us guarantee the quality of the product.
Read the full article…
Easy Estimation With Story Points
Relative estimation, using story points, has proven itself superior to traditional time-guessing approaches. Common approaches to creating story point estimates, notably planning poker, aren’t great at getting the whole team involved in the conversation. Usually, only the outliers participate. This article describes a better approach, which we have been using with our clients for years.
Read the full article…