Developing People and Teams [P1]: Facilitation - Facilitation techniques for sprint retro

Question 1

What is the event purpose of the sprint retrospective?

Answer 1

The Scrum Team inspects how the last Sprint went; individuals, interactions, process, tools and Definition of Done. Output: the Scrum Team adapts by identifying the most helpful changes to improve its effectiveness.

Question 2

Facilitator focus for sprint retrospective?

Answer 2

Enable a safe atmosphere in which everyone in the team feels open to participate. Listen actively to what is said and what is not said. Open the floor to different perspectives. Build consensus and clearly define next steps.

Question 3

How do you set the prime direction of a Sprint Retrospective?

Answer 3

regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources availably, and the situation at hand

Question 4

What should you review at the beginning of a Sprint Retrospective?

Answer 4

the action items from last time

• has the team addressed the improvements?
• what was the impact?
• are any outstanding improvements still relevant?
• what should the team do about them?

Question 5

Explain the Perfection Game facilitation technique

Answer 5

• three sections - 1) I rate this sprint on a scale from 1 to 10, 2) what I think we did well as a team, 3) what can the team do to improve
• Individually do and then share, and either do one section at a time or all at the very end

Question 6

What affinity mapping?

Answer 6

group similar items together

Question 7

Explain ideas for how to facilitate action item creation

Answer 7

• Allow team members to discuss action items and ask questions
• Decide on most impactful action items
  • timebox e.g. 3 mins
  • vote for most impactful

Question 8

What is the Dot Technique for voting?

Answer 8

• number of votes per person must be less than half the number of potential action items
• can put all dots on one single improvement action if they believe it is the best

Question 9

What type of thinking must you watch on in a Sprint Retrospective? How do we avoid this?

Answer 9

Band-wagoning - group think voting

Anonymous voting

Question 10

How to create a safe environment and get the team on the same page?

Answer 10

Try creating team agreement collaboratively

Try creating personal maps

Question 11

Do can you do if you want to avoid groupthink? And/ or want to come up with many different ideas?

Answer 11

Try diverging & converging techniques such as silent brainstorming,1-2-4-al, crazy 8s, grouping (affinity mapping)

Question 12

When should the White Elephant technique be used?

Answer 12

• Has the team fallen into the trap of doing Scrum mechanically and not getting the true value out of the events?
• Is there a shared understanding of the purpose of the Scrum elements?
• How can the team improve their use of the elements so they provide (even) more value to the team?

Question 13

How do you use the White Elephant technique?

Answer 13

• At the start of the Sprint Retrospective we created a scale ranging from ‘No Value’ to ‘High Value’. We added the following Scrum elements: the five Scrum Events and the three Scrum Artifacts with their corresponding commitments.
• The activity starts with placing the Scrum elements on a scale of how much value they currently provide:
  
  • The facilitator starts a 1 minute timer for the first team member’s turn. They choose a Scrum element (blue sticky note) and read it out loud to the group.
  • They then place the Scrum element on the scale where they believe it is most appropriate within the Scrum Team’s context.
  • They provide the reasons why they placed it where they did.
  • It is then the turn of the next team member, and the process is repeated with the facilitator restarting the timer.
• Only the team member whose turn it is can speak, and they can place the element wherever they believe it is appropriate, without any external interference. It is important that other team members are silent and do not pass judgment.
• If a team member does not place an element on a scale within one minute, the element must be placed in the middle of the scale.
• When all elements have been placed on the scale, it is time to start making adjustments.
  
  • The facilitator gives each team member in turn, again limited to 1 minute, the opportunity to move an element on the scale.
  • The team member provides the reason why they have moved the element.
  • The team continue to take turns until everyone in the team passes*.
  • Passing means that the team is happy that the placement of the elements on the scale represents the team fairly. If a team member does not make a decision within the 1 minute, it will be interpreted as a pass.
• White Elephant can be followed up with, for example, a Lean Coffee to discuss and order concrete actions based on the results.

Question 14

What is the result of White Elephant?

Answer 14

find out if they had missed out on the purpose of something and how they can improve

Question 15

Five Ways to Build Consensus

Answer 15

1-2-4-All

Thirty-Five

Buy a feature

Dot Voting

Fist of Five

Question 16

Explain the 1-2-4-All technique

Answer 16

• Ensure there is a shared understanding of the problem the group is trying to solve. Ideally frame the problem as a question. My personal favorite way to do this is using the ‘[How Might We’]format.
• Round 1 - 1 minute
  
  • Each person individually reflects on the question.
• Round 2 - 2 minutes
  
  • People generate ideas in pairs, building on ideas from the first round.
• Round 3 - 4 minutes
  
  • People share options and ideas gathered in round 2 and build on those in foursomes.
• Round 4 - 5 minutes
  
  • Each groupshares one important idea that stood out to them with all

Question 17

Explain the Thirty-Five technique

Answer 17

• game is designed in such a way that people cannot cheat the system and influence the outcome
• Example of when to use: when Scrum Teams are looking to agree on which new ideas for their product to take forward
• Steps
  
  • The team has a list of different ideas generated from a brainstorming session. Each idea is written on an individual card, so there are a bunch of cards to choose from.
  • One by one, each person picks a card with the idea that they believe is best. If someone else has already picked what they believe is the best idea, then they can take what they think is the second best idea and so on. Once everyone has a card, the game can start.
  • The group form pairs and decide between them, how they would divide 7 points between the 2 cards/ ideas they have. They add their scores to the back of each card.
  • Pairs swap cards and partner up with someone else. This is repeated for 5 rounds in total, so that each person has worked with others to distribute 35 points across the items.
  • At the end of the fifth round, add up all points at the back of each card.
  • Sort the cards/ ideas with the highest score on top.

Question 18

Explain the Buy a Feature technique

Answer 18

• Although primarily seen as a collaborative priortisation technique, buy a feature can also be used as an excellent way to reach consensus.
• clever part is that some of the items are priced so that no one person can buy a feature on their own, leading the group to have to negotiate with each other to agree on the features they want the most
• Steps
  
  • Present a list of the potential options.
  • Ensure each option has a price - this can be set based on estimated development costs, assumed customer value or anything else you want.
  • Invite a group of 4 to 7 players. They can be your stakeholders, or actual potential users of your product. If you use it to buy improvement actions, then it would be the team members.
  • Each of the players receives some play money, but not too much - options should be priced so highly so that no one player can buy them by themselves, and not all options can be paid for by the whole group.
  • Observe your players as they negotiate and pool their money to buy the options available.

Question 19

Explain Fist of Five technique

Answer 19

• Ensure a shared understanding of the idea or proposal the team is voting on.
• Agree the degree of consensus required. How strong the consensus needs to be depends on the context. For example, if you are holding a vote on an idea that has a great impact on everyone in the Scrum Team, then it can be agreed that it will need everyone to hold up at least four fingers. However, in many other cases, a Scrum Team can agree that having a majority of at least three finger votes is good enough for a decision to have been made.
• Once the team has agreed on how strong the consensus should be, they can hold the vote. The team discusses the option and when ready, on a count of (usually) three, each member shows their vote (one to five fingers).
  
  • Five fingers:Awesome idea! Let’s go for it!
  • Four fingers:Good idea! It has my support.
  • Three fingers:I am on the fence. I think it is neither good nor bad.
  • Two fingers:I don’t like the idea, I would prefer that we look for other ideas.
  • One finger:I cannot support this idea. Let’s look at alternatives.
• Check the results. If the team has reached consensus then only one round of fist of five voting is needed. If the team has not reached consensus then they can discuss and refine the idea and vote again.

Question 20

When should you use the Fist of Five technique?

Answer 20

• helps me as a facilitator to gauge a range of agreement and still enables a collaborative decision
• when building consensus is needed on making a single decision at a time, rather than deciding between multiple options
• usage - e.g. Shall we take it forward? Should we refine it? Or should we abandon the whole idea entirely?