Uncovering the Essentials of Skilled Facilitation for Agile Teams

Does this work require you to know what the team is making and how? But it often doesn’t require the depth of specialized knowledge needed to build end solutions. In fact, another voice with the same experience and biases might only add to a myopic perspective and goals. These practices are mixed and matched appropriately to ensure all elements of a solution are developed with high quality and can be delivered in the shortest sustainable lead time. The ART’s areas of responsibility are identical to those of the Agile team. However, the ART applies them at scale, throughout the value stream, to deliver integrated solutions with compelling business value.

In addition to velocity and distribution, the additional SAFe flow measures of flow time, load, efficiency, and predictability are equally valuable to the teams. As noted earlier, quantitative measures should be combined with other qualitative insights. In this example, the newly formed team has unstable velocity early on but sees some higher throughput. However, they later discovered that those stories didn’t integrate well into the broader system or perhaps did not meet all the NFRs. At times, a feeling of resistance, or an instinct to shut down may arise.

Characteristics of Agile Teams

ARTs comprise several Agile teams, are cross-functional, and can cover the complete solution delivery life cycle. Agile teams and ARTs are mutually responsible for building quality into everything they deliver. The result is an organization with the team and technical agility required to deliver continuous value at agile team facilitation an enterprise scale. The SAFe Team and Technical Agility competency guides the creation of effective cross-functional Agile Teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs). It encourages teams to apply specific quality practices and work with extended stakeholders to deliver valuable products and services to their customers.

Agile Facilitation is essential for an organization that thinks about Agile Transformation and development. The responsibility of the Agile Team Facilitator is to ensure that conditions exist to meet the objectives to be realized. To excel as an Scrum facilitator, understanding the importance of facilitation skills and mastering the key Scrum facilitation techniques are paramount. This blog post provides insights into these essentials while shedding light on how our Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™ course can aid your Agile journey. Agile Teams power the Agile Release Train (ART) and thereby, the entire development portfolio. Agile teams collaborate with other teams to deliver ART solutions.

Build initial trust levels with authenticity

It’s important to provide a clear and visible agenda and purpose for SoS. This enables all the teams in the ART to prepare and show up with the right information to work dependencies and remove impediments. The pain caused by avoidance or indirect communication is always worth this time and effort. For more detailed PI Planning facilitation guides and templates, check out the SAFe PI Planning toolkit. Scripting this prevents worry in the moment and allows us to focus on active facilitation. I know I’m successful when, in the Q&A, team members make clear connections between the product strategy and top features in the program backlog.

The Agile coach or facilitator plays an important role in managing the entire team of Agile consisting of an iteration manager, Scrum Master, Kanban coach, Scrum coach, and more. He/She aims to assist the whole Agile team in increasing the productivity of the team. However, the facilitator should possess the technical proficiency to guide the team in the right way. As the Agile Facilitator also participates in the discussion, the session becomes very detailed.

AGILE

As a result, assigning work to individual team members is no longer required. Teams become self-directed, self-reliant, and have more autonomy, further enabling decentralized decision-making all the way to the individual contributor. Agile teams are more productive than groups of similar individuals, are more engaged in their work, and have more fun on the job. A scrum master’s best tools are powerful questions and intentional listening. If you share deep technical expertise with your teammates, you may have a bias when determining problems and solutions. As explained by Principle #6 – Make value flow without interruptions, SAFe is a flow-based system that promotes fast, efficient value delivery.

You will get the opportunity to spot many probable iterations and can typically spot areas in which further discussions might be possible. An Agile team facilitator needs to have extensive knowledge of employee and workplace behavior; having a background in occupational or organizational psychology can be especially helpful. Agile team facilitators also need to have strong interpersonal skills. They often work closely with individuals to determine their strengths and weaknesses and alleviate individual pain points with an end goal of helping the team function better together. When teams come together to collaborate, rarely are topics or decisions black and white with a clear ‘right’ answer. You’re helping the group define the shades of gray so that they can make more informed decisions.

Agile Team Facilitation

This holds true not only when creating an energetic environment where the team is engaged and focused on achieving the objective together, but also when interactions do not go as expected. The goal of team facilitation and coaching is to establish trust, build rapport and open communication, clarify key roles and responsibilities, and establish goals. An effective personal development plan and a mentoring agreement should be created between the facilitator/coach and the individuals within the team. Another fun way to innovate is a game-based technique known as spider-webbing, which is essentially a type of context diagramming with your own set of rules woven into proceedings. It’s also something that will break the ice and get the creative juices flowing. The Agile facilitator will be responsible for designing meetings.

The Agile Facilitator participation is crucial to make the team understand the Agile dynamics essential for the project. A facilitator with a high-level of understanding of the subject matter makes the Agile facilitator much more effective and trustworthy for the participants. Therefore, it is necessary to have the right skills to be an effective facilitator of an Agile environment.

How to prepare for a successful PI Planning

Newly discovered legacy practices and policies that cause impediments or extra work should be taken care of immediately. Solution development relies heavily on creativity, focus, and the intellectual effort of team members. The ‘zone’ is a highly productive mental state that takes time to enter and sustain. Team Flow describes a state in which Agile teams deliver a continuous flow of value to the customer.

Participants to leave a “live demo” slide if they plan to share their screens during the event. This orients new people to your organization to your process for managing dependencies and risks. It also shows them where to find the information they may need about other teams’ work. A single, visible place for all SoS notes allows teams to add updates before the meeting. It allows others to review and show up to SoS ready to ask questions or share related information. After PI Planning, it’s essential to manage dependencies in a clear and consistent way.

QUALITY

Organized around one or more value streams, ARTs align teams to a common business and technology mission. They exist to deliver valuable solutions to their customers, which requires a broad spectrum of skills applied to five primary areas of responsibility (Figure 7). Each Agile team adopts SAFe Scrum, SAFe Team Kanban, or a hybrid method to regulate their synchronization and delivery cadence. They apply the chosen method to manage a shared backlog, deliver incrementally, build necessary Architectural Runway, and obtain frequent customer and stakeholder feedback. Generally, the balance of work items is indicative of team and system health.

• This means RTEs work with the head of product to create a presentation that encourages engagement with the content.
• When teams come together to collaborate, rarely are topics or decisions black and white with a clear ‘right’ answer.
• Nowadays, facilitation techniques are an essential toolkit for a good manager, whether you’re using Agile or classic techniques.
• When a team applies SAFe Team Kanban, the SM/TC has the specialty skills to facilitate an effective Kanban implementation.
• As the Agile Facilitator also participates in the discussion, the session becomes very detailed.