Scrum Agile Project Management

How to Facilitate a Scrum Sprint Goal Session

The Scrum Glossary defines the Sprint Goal as “a short expression of the purpose of a Sprint, often a business problem that is addressed”. In this article Özmen Adibelli provides a facilitation meeting structure and some tips on how to facilitate a session about a controversial topic like the Sprint Goal.

Author: Özmen Adibelli, ACM, http://www.acm-software.com/en/

The Sprint Goal is tricky concept. Some people think that it is a must. Some think that it is useless. Is there a point somewhere in between? We wanted to figure this out. That is why we gathered with the Scrum Masters in the organization that I help as an Agile Coach.

I know that gathering in a room and giving “important” information about Sprint Goal would not work. People have different ideas. Every team has its own conditions and best practices may not work as “plug and play” in a complex environment. So, I wanted to facilitate an interactive Sprint Goal session. A session in which participants don’t want to check their latest Instagram stories. Hopefully, they would leave the room with new ideas to experiment and excitement to apply. Here is my facilitation format:

How to Facilitate a Scrum Sprint Goal Session

1. Why are we here?

After welcoming participants, I asked why they were in the meeting. Mostly, that is not what people expect. It makes people understand that it is not a listening session. Telling “I want this meeting to be interactive” does not work. Because interactivity is not something you ask for, but it is something you need to provide.

Then, I clarified the goal of the session which is sharing information about the Sprint Goal and deciding new experiments to learn. I asked if this goal made sense. Hopefully, it did. There is an extra benefit of asking a question in the beginning. The research says that if somebody talks once, the chances are she will talk again.

Afterwards, I asked another question: how many times the “Sprint Goal” is stated in Scrum Guide? “Five!” and “zero!” were the two answers. The right answer is “twenty-six”. My goal was not to tell that the Sprint Goal is a must. My intention was to create a sense of urgency because it is an important topic of the framework they work with. It is worth to discuss.

2. What? + Why?

Providing information is a challenging task. Our instinct is that we should cover all the important stuff about the topic. Participants will love to listen and they will learn what we teach. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. This is why I use drawing. First, it forces me to focus on the fundamental parts of the topic. Then, it helps people to digest the information easier. Finally, you have the opportunity to go back to what you mean and discuss it again.

How to Facilitate a Scrum Sprint Goal Session

3. Your Experience?

During the informing part, in people’s minds, theory and practice start to fight. So, leaving a space to reveal that fight pays off. I asked people to tell one good and one not so good thing from their experience of using the Sprint Goal. Of course, it didn’t lead to two answers for each person. But lowering the expectations helped people to share easier.

Writing down the ideas shared on the whiteboard helps to revisit them during the session.

4. How?

Because I already talked about “the what” and “the why”, I wanted to give the space for the participants to interact. Before giving any suggestions, I asked people to decide how they may create the Sprint Goal. That activated people. I wrote down their ideas on the whiteboard, because it emphasizes how valuable their ideas are.

Facilitation is full of surprises. What you plan may not work. People pay attention to the things you didn’t. So, it is important to adapt their needs. For instance, I had planned “what if?” cases in a different part of the facilitation. But, people didn’t want to wait. They told what if cases in “how?” part. So what I did was combining the next part of the facilitation. I made however clear which ideas are about how and which ones are about what if by writing on a whiteboard. Therefore, we could discuss each category separately in their own context.

5. What if?

Receiving a question is challenging. You may want to instantly give the perfect answer. There are two things to consider before giving the “perfect” answer. The first thing is it is not easy to understand the real intention behind the question. So, trying to summarize and asking for confirmation may help. The second thing is asking the question back to the other participants. It may trigger valuable discussions which are not possible if you had given the “perfect” answer.

6. Let’s experiment!

Facilitating a session is an output. The outcome is that participants try new things discovered during the session. So, the last part is asking them what they would do differently after the session. This question is scary to a facilitator. Because you may face with an awkward silence. That is also a lesson learned that does not make you feel good. I was lucky enough to hear what they would try differently. The best thing to happen after hearing them is that the desire to experiment becomes contagious; people hearing other people and deciding their own experiments.

As a facilitator, generally you are the only excited one for the upcoming session. You will facilitate it and you want it to be the best one that participants have ever seen. But don’t forget, it is mostly just another meeting request on participants’ calendar. So, let the participants digest what the session offers and give enough space to let them become active.

You have your own thoughts, discoveries and beliefs. But everyone has a different learning journey. It is better not to plan the session with biased ideas. Because that may kill the opportunities of contribution. This facilitation structure helped me to provide the opportunity. Do your job well and create the best structure in your mind fit for purpose, but be ready to adapt to what happens during the session.

Lastly, thank you Gülnur Bayhan for helping me to facilitate the session, encourage to write a blog post and review it. Thank you Alper Tonga for showing me how to open a great session and reviewing this article.

About the Author

Özmen Adibelli works as an Agile Coach at ACM. He helps teams to move forward in their high-performance journey as a coach and facilitator. He is passionate about finding new ways to do it. He looks for promising practices in different areas to solve unique problems of team dynamics. This article was originally published on http://www.acm-software.com/en/acmblog/facilitated-session-controversial-topic-like-sprint-goal/ and is reproduced with permission from ACM.

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