This means that the course is designed to cover all the learning objectives required by ICAgile. We ask you to keep your camera on and have a good working microphone so you can actively participate in the many coaching and mentoring activities, breakout sessions, teach-back moments and presentations. The role of agile facilitator is to plan and implement an appropriate process; the rest of the group is responsible for the content of the discussion by contributing expertise.
Improve business processes by understanding organization structure and design. Facilitation is so much more than running meetings; it’s a way to help people make progress, accomplish goals, remove impediments, and generally do great things. It’s truly a foundational skill that can grow and serve you well on a variety of career paths. The future of leadership is Agile, and professional facilitation skills are a crucial part of that future. Understanding and effectively managing team dynamics is critical for Scrum teams to function optimally.
Agile Facilitation Techniques
A new edition of the Minimum Viable Library on Agile Leadership is available! Explore a series of carefully curated collections of essential books, newsletters, podcasts, and tools to elevate your agile expertise. The Agile Team Facilitation Certificate issued by ICAgile after this certification program has lifetime validity.
Yes, it aids with getting the discussion instigated, and it can bring meaningful outcomes as well. For instance, when you follow this technique, your team will start thinking about retrospectives against pre-requisites alone. Agile Facilitation is essential for an organization that thinks about Agile Transformation and development.
The Vital Role of Facilitation Skills in Scrum
A flow must be created to achieve those goals and ensure participation. Developing your own style and identity as a facilitator is the fifth step to mastering agile team facilitation. Style and identity are what make you unique, and they include your personality, values, beliefs, passions, and aspirations. Having this will help you express yourself and connect with participants, find your voice and assert your authority, stand out from other facilitators, and grow and evolve as a facilitator. To do this, explore your facilitation personality and preferences with tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the StrengthsFinder.
Scrum Alliance-certified educators help you build your facilitation muscles in the Agile Coaching Skills – Certified Facilitator (ACS-CF) course. Grow as a facilitator who supports group events so people can make a difference at their workplaces. Please use the form at the bottom of this page to get an email when the ACS course is open for registration. Encouraging an open and honest exchange of feedback guides the team toward actionable insights and improvement plans. This commitment to continual growth contributes to a sustainable pace of development, improved product quality, and increased customer satisfaction over time.
BUSINESS
An Agile facilitator is the one who has the right to conduct a meeting and even participates in the discussions to encourage the conditions of effective group processes to meet the goals of the organization. Let us check out the other facts of Agile facilitation in detail below. 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 ATF facilitates participation, collaboration, engagement, and team growth. Initially the individual members of a group need to express their own points of view with the help of a facilitator.
- The benefits of agile facilitation are that meetings are properly managed and make all stakeholders feel heard, reduce confrontation and enable a team to come up with objectives everyone can agree on.
- The Certificate doesn’t mention if you followed an online or in-class course.
- We recommend also using Liberating Structures, which are a selection of 33 microstructures for facilitating meetings and conversations.
- First, the Agile facilitator is referred to as ‘framework agnostic’ because it is not tied to a Scrum framework.
- This course will contribute 14 PMI® Professional Development Units (PDUs) towards your chosen certification (7 leadership hours and 7 technical hours).
- Further, you should also ensure that there is enough time to adjust the agenda items before the date of the meeting.
Agile teams often comprise individuals with diverse skills and perspectives, which, while being a strength, can also lead to conflicts or miscommunication. A skilled Scrum facilitator navigates these dynamics, promotes healthy communication, resolves disputes, and ensures that each member’s contributions are valued. Skilled facilitators can help drive discussions toward a common understanding or agreement, supporting the team’s decision-making agile facilitation process. We offer an extensive follow-up program to all our students including two sessions with a professional coach. These sessions are there to help you get on your feet as an Agile Coach, but if you wish, you may address a completely different challenge with your coach. This class is thaught online using Zoom as our online meeting place where we will discuss, present and experiment with the different stances and roles of an Agile Coach.
Training Move your teams or your own career
We will specifically design common sessions such as Retrospectives and Daily Stand-Ups. The role of an agile team facilitator is to promote a facilitation mindset as well as guide and manage the agile team to be successful by using agile principles. This includes identifying and helping remove blockers to make sure a team can meet their objective. This is different from a scrum master role as the agile facilitator is framework agnostic.
The most effective facilitation creates a productive environment that brings out the group’s innate creativity and encourages participation. When people contribute to the outcome of an event, they are more likely to understand the result and agree to carry out plans made during the event. A facilitator is a person who guides a group of people through a process that achieves their client’s desired outcome. Everyone in the group contributes to, understands, and accepts the results because the facilitator supports a process that maximizes participation, creativity, and productivity.
Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) Live-Virtual Course
You can do this by volunteering to facilitate meetings, workshops, or events for your team or organization. Additionally, you can join or create a community of practice or a peer group where you can exchange feedback and learn from other facilitators. You can also participate in online or in-person facilitation games, exercises, or challenges that will test your skills and challenge your assumptions. Facilitating typical Agile framework meetings is a requirement for the Agile Team Facilitator. 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.
The mindset and skill of the facilitator determine the outcome of meetings and large-scale collaborations. Purpose – As a Scrum Master, you will need to facilitate Scrum events, decision making, conflict resolution and other critical discussions. This will require some preparation and deliberation to ensure the goals are met.
Agile Coach Toolkit #4: Effective Facilitation
The importance of having teams with diverse specialties and experience is growing, and Agile has emerged as a way to help bring those varied voices together. Successful Agile implementation can’t be done without the effective work of an Agile team facilitator bringing together the experience and know-how of each member of the team. People think better and are better at decision making when they’re stimulated and that’s exactly what these kinds of techniques are designed to achieve. Get creative in your meetings and you might be surprised about what you can achieve with your team members.