Quickly learn how to become a more effective Agile facilitator through a blend of lecture, simulations, games, and interactive discussions.
The Agile Team Facilitation course is the first step towards achieving the coveted expert level in ICAgile’s Agile Coaching track (ICP-ATF certification). The course gives you the much-needed skills to design and conduct collaborative meetings while leading teams toward higher maturity levels, more effective results, and self-organization.
This Agile Team Facilitation course focuses not only on skills and techniques but also on the mindset of the facilitator towards becoming an Agile Coach. It includes group facilitation tools and techniques to effectively design meetings and workshops that engage and drive toward agreed-upon outcomes. In this class, you will develop an appreciation for the art of facilitation as key to fostering collaboration and enabling self-organizing teams.
This course provides the essential team facilitation skills needed to lead teams towards greater agility. In addition to reviewing facilitation techniques for Agile practices, participants will also learn how to design and conduct other types of meetings to ensure successful outcomes.
Audience
Anyone who strives to lead teams towards greater efficiency and achieve tangible results will benefit from the essential leadership skills of team facilitation.
Professionals who may benefit include:
In This Class You Will Learn How To:
Part 1: Welcome, Introductions, and Course Logistics
A Team Facilitator is someone who helps a group identify common objectives and then offers group processes to achieve defined outcomes. A skilled facilitator consciously embodies self-awareness, self-management, and bias management, while conveying openness and enthusiasm. An Agile Team Facilitator (ATF) is about more than just meetings. An ATF facilitates participation, collaboration, engagement, and team growth.
Part 2: Development Path for Agile Coaching
The Agile Team Facilitator is on the development path to becoming an Agile Coach. To be effective, the Agile Coaching path requires that we take our development one step at a time, obtaining competence at each step along the way. We will review the development path and transition from Agile Team Facilitator to Agile Coach.
Part 3: The Agile Team Facilitator Mindset
Becoming an Agile Team Facilitator requires a certain mindset to lead and serve the team. Learn the mindset required for the Agile Team Facilitator and gain an understanding of the paradigm shift that must occur to be successful in this collaborative environment. Understand how the Agile Team Facilitator is a role model for the team by exemplifying the Agile principles. Review the strategies required to be a servant leader and models for achieving self-awareness.
Part 4: Foundational Facilitation Skills
One of the essential skills for the Agile Team Facilitator is helping teams identify and achieve common objectives. The ATF facilitates the team events to ensure they are productive and move the team forward. This starts with understanding the purpose and expected outcomes of the various team events. A flow must be created to achieve those goals and ensure participation.
Part 5: Conducting a Facilitated Session
When facilitating a session, the facilitator is the holder of the process and the team holds the content. The facilitator must maintain neutrality to not unduly influence team decisions. They must make sure that the event is organized to encourage collaboration. This includes the physical setup, meeting organization tools, and driving collaborative conversations.
Part 6: Facilitating Collaborative Meetings
Facilitating typical Agile framework meetings is a requirement for the Agile Team Facilitator. We must plan these events and keep them engaging. To do so, the ATF must understand the purpose and underlying principles and values of the ceremonies. In this section, we will go through the ceremonies for an agile framework and design meetings to facilitate achievement of the desired outcomes. We will specifically design common sessions such as Retrospectives and Daily Stand-Ups. We will also look at the design of other key ceremonies.
Part 7: Skillfully Facilitating Agile Practices
Teams will move in and out of patterns of behavior. The ATF needs to recognize team patterns and know when a team may need more, or less, intervention. We will look at how our styles need to change based on the team current state of knowledge and self-sufficiency.
Part 8: Active Facilitation
This section is devoted to putting our training into action! The ability to neutrally facilitate a session must be practiced. Attendees will have an opportunity to design and facilitate a team session based on scenarios from agile framework meetings.
Part 9: Summary
Summarize key takeaways from the course and pull it all together.
This is an intermediate/advanced level workshop. Participants should have completed basic Agile training - such as an ICAgile accredited Agile Fundamentals course, a Certified Scrum Master course, or an equivalent or have completed 6 to 12 months of working with Agile teams. If you are unsure if you meet this prerequisite, you should give us a call and ask.
