This is the last of four posts covering facilitation games for the different phases of meetings – Check In, Opening, Exploring, Closing.

Closing activities form the “future” section of the agenda. Following the Exploring phase, they are focused around the question ‘How do our new insights help us move into the future?’

As with Opening and ‘Exploring-Divergent’ activities, there is a lot of overlap between ‘Exploring-Convergent’ and Closing activities. For me the distinction is the move to a planning phase: establishing a goal to move forward with, and the activities to support it. If the focus of the session is Planning, this could use up to half the allotted time, for others around a third to a quarter.

It’s also important to be aware of the time span available to implement change, and have the group select the most valuable area of focus within that context.

Ranking / Selecting:

Finding the right focus is much more reliable when multiple interests are represented – it’s easier to avoid personal agendas and generates more discussion around what really is valuable and possible. Selection criteria, such as ‘what we are able to do now,’ ‘what fits best with our team objectives’ and ‘what do we have most passion for’, play a significant part in identifying an achievable goal the whole team is committed to.

• Ordering – Simply placing the ideas in priority order on the board is a good quick way to agree on importance – a variation is to have the group do this in silence at first, to identify debate-worthy areas.
• Dot voting – quick technique using scarcity to clarify personal commitment
• Impact / Effort Matrix – timeless sorting method for short / medium / long term plans (Innovgames.com has an online version as well)
• Other decision-making grids: using the framework above, rank items by ‘Risk vs Impact’, ‘Importance vs Urgency’ and so on
• Thirty-Five – great technique for sharing and ranking ideas in one, esp with an added twist of selling each idea as you go along. Works as a quick-and-dirty ranking method for generating and selecting ideas for discussion in groups of 10 and up – not ideal for finalizing critical issues

Goals:

While it’s generally agreed that we should create SMART goals, it’s hard to find activities that support goal clarification. Esther Derby’s article on Double Loop Learning provides some excellent questions to interrogate the goals for validity; and I use this format in retrospectives:

• Goal Focus – Friendly way to ensure goals are SMART: once you have consensus on a goal, ask the questions: Can we do it? Why is it important? What could stop us from achieving it? How will we know when it’s done? Clarifies that the goal is appropriate for the skills & responsibilities of the team, as well as the time allotted.

Consensus:

Physical interaction tends to be a more effective way to indicate the level of commitment or agreement than a purely verbal response, and is more likely to surface any hesitation, making it easier to clarify the boundaries of what can be achieved.

• Thumb vote – powerfully simple indication of agreement: Thumb up: I agree / support this goal; Sideways: neither agree nor disagree – will vote with whatever the group chooses; Down: I don’t support this goal / don’t think we should do it now.
• Fist of Five – more detailed than a thumb vote, showing degree of alignment
• Vote with your feet – Physical & spatial vote, nice for large groups: for comparative values, have participants stand somewhere along a line indicating their position on an issue. Gets the group moving, shows physical choice of position, and creates a 3D graph of the spread of commitment
• Jump vote – Fun physical ice-breaker type vote in which each member jumps to indicate their level of commitment, enjoyment, intention etc. – ideally for lighthearted topics and large groups. Use a circle format for a quick opening or closing.

Actions:

This nuts-and-bolts section identifies how to take a new possibility to a new reality, and could feel tiring or exciting – it helps to get this pace right. Again, it’s important to limit the actions to a realistic number.

• Problem Solving Tree – Consistently asking “How can we do that?” generates detailed actions for solving issues (another version here)
• Graphic Gameplan – Identify major steps required for meeting each objective – nice for high-level project views, and a good way to generate collaborative plans; also a nice Exploring activity for focused planning sessions
• Who / What / When Matrix – For simpler goals, generate the action plan collaboratively

Close:

I try to close all facilitated sessions with a quick feedback format that allows participants to review the experience, helps me to get to know the teams better, and helps me improve as a facilitator. The higher the trust relationship, the better the feedback, the more trust is built … and so on.

• Plus / Delta or Keep / Change: What was positive, what to change
• Start / Stop / Continue: Quick version of the Exploring game
• Helped / Hindered / Hypothesis: helps frame how well participants were able to contribute (from Agile Retrospectives)
• WIIFM – Review the What’s In It For Me notes created in the Check In phase – gives feedback on whether expectations were met, and generates interesting discussion around what was learned in the course.

Another wrap-up mechanism is sharing individual perspectives; I do these in call-out fashion:

• Three wishes – Some things I’d love to see happen (from Agile Retrospectives)
• 1 Takeaway – One thing I’ve gained from this session
• Temperature Reading – Good debrief technique for longer sessions
• Appreciations – Nice way to highlight contributions that otherwise would likely go unnoticed, and end the session on a positive note (from Agile Retrospectives)

Most of these activities come from books, blogs or training sessions I’ve been part of; some I’ve created to meet specific needs. Where I can find attributions they are noted; if you see any I’ve missed, or know of links I haven’t found, please let me know in the comments below.

This is the third of four posts covering facilitation games for the different phases of meetings – Check In, Opening, Exploring, Closing.

Exploring is essentially the ‘Present’ phase of facilitation, with two major sections within it: Exploring: Divergent and Exploring: Convergent.

Divergent games feel a lot like ‘Part 2’ to Data Gathering – and I think it is a bit of a grey area: I often find them so closely linked that the two sections can be combined, but sometimes there is value in having them both. Then Convergent exercises consolidate our findings in preparation for moving to the “Future” phase.

As I understand complexity theory in software development, the Exploring section relates to managing emergence, and ‘sensing’ in Cynefin’s Probe – Sense – Respond model. It’s this level of investigation that helps us to see what effects our actions are really having, identify positive and negative patterns that may be developing, as well as highlight unexpected areas of potential.

Exploring: Divergent

Here, we want to delve further into issues that are important, extending our understanding by looking through a different lens – of brainstorming, understanding risk, or in-depth analysis.

Generate Ideas / Breakthrough thinking:
I was fortunate to attend a session with Darian Rashied called “Facilitating Creativity for Breakthrough Problem Solving” at the London Scrum Gathering last year. In it, Darian explained how unexpected connections work to generate ideas: things that make no sense keep us occupied, we can’t walk away from them. This means we reach deeper and cross boundaries we would usually stay well within, in order to resolve the senselessness. According to John Medina in Brain Rules, this can even carry through to our sleep, hence the term “sleep on it”.

Using de Bono’s framework, Darian reinterpreted the game phases as follows:

Opening > Exploring (divergent) > Exploring (cohesive) > Closing
Provocation > Movement > Harvesting > Treatment

Provocation: ridiculous, fun, laughing – getting out of the serious mode activates a different part of brain which frees up our imagination
Movement: activities that stimulate mental leaps help us escape our normal, tried-and-tested thought patterns
Harvesting: reaping the benefit of our slightly altered viewpoints by creating space for the ridiculous, accepting and investigating all ideas
Treatment: taking ridiculous ideas and reshaping them back to practical applications

While some of the ideas below may seem whacky, they really do generate at the very least some interesting new viewpoints.

• Random Input: Idea generating technique that works by aligning the problem with the attributes of a random object (played in Darian’s workshop, from Edward de Bono’s How To Have Creative Ideas)
• Brainwriting: Generate ideas and share them, expanding on each others ideas as you go (also in Gamestorming)
• Anti-Problem: Solving the opposite of your problem helps to view the issue from an ‘opposite’ perspective, and promotes both idea generation and a “re-view” of your current processes
• Destruction Plan: Taking the Anti-Problem to an extreme, this game harnesses our apparently abundant destructive abilities to create awareness of tools, processes & ideas we don’t normally consider, then reframe them for positive effect (played in Darian’s workshop).

Root Cause Analysis²:
Sometimes we encounter issues that are really symptoms of deeply rooted organizational impediments. This is especially valid for recurring issues, as well as catastrophic events. Here we need to dig deep to unpack the root cause of the problem.

• 5 Why’s: Originally from the Toyota kata, this method uses 5 as a heuristic number of times we need to ask “Why” something happened to get to a level of human cause(s), such as flawed process or incorrect assumptions
• Cause and Effect Diagrams: These diagrams make visible all the ‘symptoms’ that need to be addressed, their apparent causes and their effects, and highlight the reinforcing loops. This is a valuable aid for identifying ‘attractors’ to enhance positive loops, and ‘dampeners’ to weaken the negative – making it possible to make decisions on what should be resolved in which order, and how we expect it to impact the rest of the system.  (Ishikawa diagrams are an alternative form of this, which I haven’t worked with)

² I owe this section to Carlo Kruger’s A3 Thinking session which he presented to SUGSA at the beginning of this month – Thanks Carlo!

Other formats:
These two formats are complete facilitation plans for generating insight from opposite standpoints: a strength-based, imagi-planning approach, and analytic problem analysis:

• Appreciative Inquiry – Highly creative full retrospective technique for generating new ideas from a positive foundation. I find that future-specting is quite hard to grasp for teams unfamiliar with agile games, so for less exploratory teams I’ve replaced this with an outcomes-focused exercise.
• A3 Thinking – Toyota’s methodical ‘total picture’ approach to understanding issues and testing corrective measures. Incorporates root cause analysis techniques into a detailed improvement plan. Great for significant issues, overkill for small ones.

Exploring: Convergent

Once we’ve expanded our view, we need to start the converging process, making sense of what we have uncovered. These sorting exercises help to clarify where ideas are overlapping and identify dominant themes and needs. I typically do all of these in a session, with more or less detail as time allows.

Grouping > Clarifying > Interpreting

• Clustering – The process of grouping associated ideas provides a the first step to identifying underlying causes, and also highlights unity and differences in a group
• Identify Themes – Having the team name the clusters of post-its encourages discussion about and agreement on the grouping, providing a nice organic approach to determining categories (from Agile Retrospectives)
• Debrief – Open questions that bring attention to emerging patterns – can be done as a quick round-robin or murmur group exercise (from Agile Retrospectives)

Through exploring our situation we seem to be answering the question ‘What does what we know about the Past tell us about the Present?’. By uncovering underlying themes and discovering experiments yet to be tried, we put ourselves in a position of strength – able to apply our insights in a way that can shape our future.

We take this information into the Closing section to identify specific probes to set up and actions to take that will help us get there.

Most of these activities come from books, blogs or training sessions I’ve been part of; some I’ve created to meet specific needs. Where I can find attributions they are noted; if you see any I’ve missed, or know of links I haven’t found, please let me know in the comments below.

This is the second of four posts covering facilitation games for the different phases of meetings: Check In, Opening, Exploring, Closing.

The Opening phase of facilitation is the space in which the group starts to unpack the topic at hand. This is usually the “past” phase – looking at what has led us to this point in time.

It’s surprisingly difficult for us to look back at events that have passed and generate insight and understanding from them. Aside from struggling to remember everything that’s valuable, often there are deeply held beliefs or other organizational messages that sway our view of events until we look at them closely from a unbiased perspective.

The Gathering Data section of the meeting gives us the opportunity to ‘get back to the facts’  of what we’re dealing with, and with the Exploring section, has the most scope for variety, providing a multitude of ways to unpack the status of a team, project or company. And doing this in a group format allows us to combine individual memories to build up a reasonably comprehensive picture of what is happening in the environment.

In Gamestorming, the authors refer to ‘Meaningful Space’ as the use of visual space to sort our experiences, knowledge and feelings into comparative or relative areas. This is particularly valuable both for prodding our memories and clarifying areas of strong agreement, disagreement, and alternate perspectives.

Timelining:

This opening format is a great way to have team members tell their story; the narrative format grabs everyone’s attention and highlights the human side of the sprint / release etc.

• Activities over time + emotions – A good way to see individual experiences – especially if you include personal events in the timeline. Increases team’s knowledge of each other, as well as what was significant to them in the sprint.
• Emotions timeline – As above, but start by drawing the emotions timeline, only adding events at major points. Use a large graph with x axis showing the time period, and y axis equal amount positive & negative space, and have each person draw their line in a different colour. Can also be used as a check-in activity.
• What was my Pace – Same format as the emotions timeline, showing when team members were balanced, cruising or overworked. Good for analysing uneven sprints, disconnected teams. Debrief looks at where people are in sync and where they aren’t, the possible reasons for this, and any other observations.
• History Map – good for company retrospectives – a timeline showing the detail of events which shaped the company’s direction and growth over time. Fun way to share corporate knowledge and reflect on events which affected the company’s development.

Categorizing:

A nice way to dissect information and prompt the group’s memory is to categorize experiences along a theme. The Learning Matrix is the most well known of these formats, and there are a variety of others below. When I can’t find something that fits, I often make these up. *Tip: Alliteration is an unexpectedly handy tool for maintaining overall cohesion.

• Liked / Lacked / Learned / Longed For – Clarifies current status and indicates areas of growth that are beginning to develop
• Components / Characteristics / Challenges / Characters – Product analysis tool, ideally used with a group representing different departments, from product management to development to infrastructure.
• Confident / Concerns / Challenges / Chocolate (i.e. the ‘sweet spot’) – Use to clarify the current state of a team / product / company etc. (used for a company retrospective and planning sessions)
• Proud / Sorry / Grateful – For high-trust teams: promotes deep connections. The addition of ‘Grateful’ helps to round out some spiky feelings and acknowledge others’ roles in ‘my’ experience. (adapted from Agile Retrospectives)
• Helped / Hindered / Hypothesis – Unpack how a method / improvement is working for us – useful for ‘measuring’ improvements (from Agile Retrospectives)
• We’re Good At / I Worry About / I Wonder About – Variation on the learning matrix, with a bit more focus on team identity
• Start, Stop, Continue, More of, Less of Wheel – Focus on process / improvements analysis – the subtle distinction between stop / less of and continue / more of invites some interesting discussions

Other shapes:

• Circles & Soup – What’s happening that is within vs. outside our control; great for identifying actions a team can responsibly take on, especially useful when decisions seem to be out of our hands, or where blaming is present
• Strengths / Weaknesses / Opportunities Timeline – A visual format that combines an events timeline around the outside of the page (Past) with ‘Strengths’ & ‘Weaknesses’ (Present) and Opportunities that can reliably be completed in the next sprint (Future) all in one. Completed in groups with feedback and debrief of themes.
• Sailboat (what puts wind in our sails, what gives us direction, what weighs us down) – Creates a sense of identity and direction (combination of Gamestorming’s Speed boat and airplane metaphor in the introduction)

Other visual formats:

• Draw the Problem – A longer drawing format similar to the Check In activity, which surfaces deep connections
• Mind mapping: Good technique for generating related information quickly, but avoid the temptation to get hung up on sorting too early – I find it useful to stress quantity over quality and use a tight timebox.
• Group posters & feedback: Fun collaborative activity for sharing perspectives

Conversation-based opening:

• Appreciative Inquiry – Interview section of this retro: good for strong teams to find new areas of improvement
• Locate Strengths (larger groups): Powerful way to get to know team members and discover unknown skills (from Agile Retrospectives)

The aim of the Opening phase is to establish the foundation from which we are building. It’s important not to start drawing conclusions directly from this data, but simply to help the group as a whole to remember as much detail as possible.

Once we have this, we move on to Exploring, where we delve deeper into extending and interpreting the data we’ve gathered.

Most of these activities come from books, blogs or training sessions I’ve been part of; some I’ve created to meet specific needs. Where I can find attributions they are noted; if you see any I’ve missed, or know of links I haven’t found, please let me know in the comments below.

This is the first of four posts covering facilitation games for the different phases of meetings: Check In, Opening, Exploring, Closing.

The Check In is the initial phase of a meeting, and to a large extent is independent of the content. The purpose of this section is to bring everyone’s focus into the room and establish the collaboration boundaries, so that right from the start we are all clear on what we expect of each other, and what we expect from the session.

For regular sessions like retrospectives with teams who know each other well, I jump straight to the Metaphor section below; for teams that are new to working together, or long facilitation sessions, I try to include all three steps as time allows.

Check In:

These activities signal the general level of attention, acknowledging outside distractions and bringing attention to the current objective.

1. Fist of Five – Adapted to show how happy / informed / focused I’m feeling right now
2. ESVP – How committed I am to being here (from Agile Retrospectives)
3. Form a line – participants stand in a line from left (low) to right (high) in response to a question such as ‘How I rank my level of knowledge’
4. WIIFM – have participants write their “What’s In It For Me” (What I want to get out of this session) on a stickynote and stick it up on a designated wall space. If time allows, have them discuss this in small groups first. Revisit at the end of the session as part of closing. Defines personal objectives, generates ideas for others, and also gives the facilitator some perspective on the group’s expectations.

Create Safety:

These activities are designed to maximize collaboration. Developing personal connections between participants and setting the boundaries of the meeting help to establish initial trust.

• Introduction Card – Pair activity: create a card for your pair stating their Name; Role; Interesting Fact; and Superhero Quality, then introduce them to the group. Fun introduction technique, creates bonds & generates laughter (from our Coaching Dojo)
• Working Agreements – Agreement on how we’ll handle distractions, conflict, tangents etc. either long term as a team or for the current meeting (from Agile Retrospectives)
• How can we make this (retrospective / session) fail? Round robin format – this is a fun way to surface fears and create awareness of unsupportive activities and attitudes, and agreement on how to avoid them or handle them if they come up.
• Focus On / Focus Off – Another way to bring awareness to collaborative vs obstructive behaviours (from Agile Retrospectives)
• Hope for the meeting / sprint etc. – Creates a shared understanding of individual objectives (from Agile Retrospectives)

Check In Metaphor:

Once the conditions of safety have been established, a quick ‘Turn the Head’ activity suffices as a Check In, providing a meaningful transition to the Opening section of the meeting.

It’s ‘disruptive’ as it challenges our thinking by bypassing the jargon we use on a daily basis, to create new associations and insights. Metaphor check-ins can also give a heads-up on underlying themes or tensions, but are quick enough to simply highlight issues without pre-empting a tangential conversation.
These ideas appear in both Gamestorming and Agile Retrospectives.

• Describe (the sprint / release / team etc.) as a:
  • Fruit, food, drink – rich associations with wide applicability; can surface emotions
  • Car, mode of transport – drive & motivation in the team
  • Colour, sound, other senses – wide applicability; can tend towards the abstract; useful for volatile situations
• Drawing:
  • Draw an image / symbol – explore visual and symbol associations, encourages lateral thinking

While there is always someone in the room who “can’t draw to save their lives,” I’ve never seen this exercise produce trivial insight. Both metaphor and drawing can create new neural networks that help to situate each participant’s experience; drawing goes further by using a different form of language and connecting different spheres of brain activity. The debrief experience tends to be rich, and contributes to building trust within the group.

… and then sometimes I just ask for any 2 or 3 words, or a highlight and lowlight, that start the discussion. This is particularly useful when I don’t know the group, when emotions are running high, or there have been a variety new experiences.

Most of these activities come from books, blogs or training sessions I’ve been part of; some I’ve created to meet specific needs. Where I can find attributions they are noted; if you see any I’ve missed, or know of links I haven’t found, please let me know in the comments below.