7 Best Techniques for Successful Agile Facilitation Meetings

Welcome to PremierAgile!

Recognized for 'Outstanding Leadership in Education and Learning' by the Education 2.0 Conference Dubai 2024

We are proudly recognized for Excellence in Agile Consulting and Transformation Services – 2023 by Economic Times and Times of India!

*Avail a Flat 10% Discount Across all our certification courses

*Avail Zero Interest EMI

We Offer World-class guidance to transform yourself as well as your organizations

Mega Offer! Access our Advanced courses for  just 21,999/- +Taxes

PremierAgile

With an objective to enable continuous learning and progression for our learners, PremierAgile curated several learning articles in the areas of Agile, Scrum, Product Ownership, Scaling, Agile Leadership, Tools & Frameworks, latest market trends, new innovations etc...

Agile Facilitation Techniques

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. The responsibility of a facilitator does not stop with standard Agile practices, and it can be a tricky task to play a meager role in a meeting but to continue to guide the team in the right direction. 

Facilitation Techniques:

Any person taking the role of Agile facilitator will find that it is not an easy task to accomplish. Here are some Agile facilitation techniques that a prospective Agile facilitator should be aware of:

1. Dot Voting:

The Agile facilitator will be responsible for designing meetings. Whether software developers, marketing teams, or business analysts in an organization take the Agile facilitator role, one of the essential techniques to follow when designing meetings is to give voice to each participant. The facilitator should get consent from every person present in the meeting and should give importance to the suggestion of each one of them. 

Once every person's ideas are obtained, they should be arranged and ranked before deciding on a specific idea and discarding others. When this is done in every meeting, people will gain motivation to move beyond their core competencies. They will start exploring other potential ideas and will give their best ideas. Dot voting is one of the Agile Facilitation Voting Techniques that is widely used.

2. Affinity Mapping:

Affinity Mapping is one of the widely used and effective Agile Facilitation techniques. It helps with the effective collection, organizing, and rationalization of ideas. This will be possible even if a facilitator gets ideas from many participants. Even though this is an old technique, it is a proven method.

3. Fist of Five Voting:

Suppose you are an Agile facilitator in a specific meeting organized to achieve quick consensus among the participants. In that case, this is one of the best Agile Facilitation Voting Techniques you can follow. When you follow this technique, you or one of the participants of the meeting will have to propose an idea audibly. Once the idea is expressed, the other participants will have to vote in favor or against the idea by raising their hands. But, the addition of votes here happens with a twist. Yes, each vote is given weightage based on the hand raiser's opinion of the idea. The ranking breaks down as follows:

  • 0-fingers or a fist: When the participants show a fist without raising any finger, it is that they do not support the idea. The problem with the fist is that the group will not proceed with the idea even if a single participant shows a fist.
  • 1-Finger: The group may move forward with the idea if one of the participants shows one finger. If a participant shows a single finger, it means that this is a good idea to proceed with, but he/she wishes to suggest resolving an issue before moving forward with this idea.
  • 2 Fingers: When a person shows two fingers for an idea, it means that he/she is ready to go with this idea. But, it is not his favorite idea.
  • 3 Fingers: Three fingers raised means they would like to proceed with this idea and do not find anything wrong in moving forward.
  • 4 Fingers: This is a good idea, and I am excited to use this idea.
  • 5 Fingers: I love this idea and will give my everything to implement this idea.

As a facilitator, discussing the issues with people showing their fingers is better if you find zeros and ones. Motivating the participants to share their concerns in bullet points is better. If you wish to achieve expert-level efficiency with the decision, it is better to overlook ideas with zeros and ones. Instead, you can propose a new solution and invite participants to re-vote. It is better to repeat the process until there is nil zero. The good thing about this voting technique is that each participant gets the power to vote, so specialization cannot be overlooked.

4. Spider Webbing:

This is a fun-filled game-based technique of Agile Facilitation. It is a kind of context drawing with your own set of rules included in proceedings. It will let you gain insights into the flows between systems and departments and let leaders mentor specific people within their teams. It uses more pictures and no words.

5. Pre-Mortem:

Pre-mortem is undoubtedly the best technique to address Risk Management. As you can understand from this term, it is related to death planning. It encompasses taking into consideration things like your bucket list. Even it encompasses things that you can do to stay healthy and safe. You might feel this idea to be a sick technique. However, it has some good things as well. Yes, it aids with getting the discussion instigated, and it can bring meaningful outcomes as well. Even it will help with setting up learning objectives for the teams. For instance, when you follow this technique, your team will start thinking about retrospectives against pre-requisites alone.

6. Thumb Voting:

Thumb Voting is one of the Agile facilitation voting techniques. This voting technique is something similar to the Fist of Five Voting. The only difference is that voters give either a thumb side, thumbs down, or thumbs up for the ideas raised in the meeting. This technique will work if you wish to decide quickly during an Agile Facilitation meeting. You may find this technique helpful when you wish the meeting to conclude quickly due to high work pressure.

7. Buy A Feature:

Have you ever felt frustrated with the inability of your Stakeholders to decide on things when it comes to prioritization? If so, the best technique you can follow is 'buy a feature.' You can get people talking about it; most importantly, this technique will help you gain meaningful insights. Even with this technique, you can review core facilitation needs and tools and can understand and review what is essential. You will get the opportunity to spot many probable iterations and can typically spot areas in which further discussions might be possible.

You can follow one of these Agile facilitation techniques. However, as an Agile facilitator, you should follow certain things to ensure that the meeting is fruitful. Let’s see a few tips to effectively plan and conclude the Agile Facilitation meetings:

Tips for Effective Agile Facilitation Meetings:
1. Begin with an Issue in Mind:

You cannot instigate a meeting when you do not spot the purpose of the meeting early. When planning for a meeting, narrow the agenda items to those that are very important to discuss. When you begin with an issue in mind, you can prevent the discussion from moving out of track.

2. Ensure that a Senior Leader Does not Handle the Meeting:

In many instances, senior leaders in organizations wish that their ideas should be taken forward. But, as an Agile facilitator, you are responsible for ensuring that your organization has an environment where the diverse ideas of employees will be considered. So, motivate open discussions, where the leaders will share ideas on how and where innovation is required. When this approach is followed, it will be possible to bring down the layer of control and approval. It will also enhance the time focused on decision-making and boost the team's innovation.

3. Spot Hindrances Early:

Inadequate collaboration between team members and bureaucratic procedures can lead to poor outcomes and meltdowns. So, it is better to anticipate how things might go wrong and be ready to provide suggestions and not dictate solutions.

4. Rather Than Telling, Show:

As against telling the participants what they have gathered for at the time of the meeting, it would be good to create the meeting agenda and goals in advance. Further, you should also ensure that there is enough time to adjust the agenda items before the date of the meeting. All participants should be able to decide on the priority list to achieve the best flow. The idea is to ensure that the meeting agenda is clear and visible to all participants.

5. Know When to Wait:

Before starting a meeting, have a clear timeline in mind; it helps prevent the discussions from getting off track. Decide when you should permit an item to go long and how long it should go.

The main goal of Agile Facilitation is to ensure that you create an atmosphere that motivates contributions and provides the team with the power to share their ideas. Improving how to conduct the meetings will help your organization quickly transition from a traditional waterfall approach to an Agile enterprise.

References
  1. https://leadershiptribe.in/blog/Agile-facilitation-and-the-techniques
  2. https://digital.ai/catalyst-blog/twelve-awesome-interactive-facilitation-techniques-for-Agile-teams
  3. https://www.clearlyAgile.com/Agile-blog/3-facilitated-voting-techniques
  4. https://opensource.com/article/18/10/Agile-culture-5-tips-meeting-facilitators

Author

Paula

Is a passionate learner and blogger on Agile, Scrum and Scaling areas. She has been following and practicing these areas for several years and now converting those experiences into useful articles for your continuous learning.