Facilitation and facilitated workshops
Learn expert facilitation techniques for agile success — read on to transform your team's collaboration.
Facilitation is a very powerful tool to use in agile environments and is very much under-used. It is one of the agile practices which you learn about when you attend agile project management training.
It must also be said that facilitation is not a very easy skill to develop. That’s because a lot of the actions and decisions you take as a facilitator are often counter-intuitive.
It is important to understand the difference between facilitated workshops, facilitation, and ‘being facilitative’.
Facilitation means to provide a creative environment to help a group of people reach a goal effectively. Facilitated workshops are a subset of facilitation. A facilitated workshop is a planned, collaborative event in which stakeholders and content experts collaborate to create, correct, and document a deliverable, or work product.
Prior to the workshop the group agrees on the deliverables, and the participants sometimes produce some of them beforehand.
Video
In this video, Keith Richards, the Founder of agileKRC and Lead Author and Chief Examiner for Agile Project Management (AgilePM) and DSDM Atern talks about the basics of facilitation, facilitation techniques and how to get trained in facilitation.
In this video Keith covers the following topics:
- The basics of facilitation.
- The benefits of facilitation.
- Facilitation – how and when.
- Facilitation techniques.
- Advanced areas of facilitation.
- How to get trained in facilitation.
Download
To download a PDF version of the presentation used in this video, click the button below.
Facilitated workshops and group participation
Facilitated workshops help groups to achieve learning objectives and encourage participation. Workshop facilitators use facilitation skills and facilitation techniques for collaborative workshops, community workshops, and engaged workshops. You might want to facilitate workshops or run facilitated activities to make things clear. Facilitated collaboration workshops and facilitated discussion workshops allow individuals to contribute ideas and discuss solutions. Facilitated discussions and facilitated group activities support engaged learning and active participation. Facilitated group sessions and facilitated group work bring together different people in workshop sessions.
Facilitated group workshops and improvement methods
Facilitated group workshops and facilitated improvement workshops focus on continual improvement processes. Facilitated innovation workshops and facilitated learning enable innovative thinking. Facilitated learning experience and facilitated learning sessions offer interactive workshops and professional workshops for skill growth. Facilitated learning workshops, facilitated meetings, and facilitated planning sessions help define objectives and share knowledge. Facilitated problem solving workshops and facilitated sessions use facilitation workshops and facilitative workshops to address challenges.
Facilitated training and team workshops
Facilitated team meetings, facilitated training, and facilitated training sessions offer guided workshops and learning workshops for teams. Facilitated training workshops and facilitated work improve team building workshops and team workshops outcomes. Work facilitated by experienced workshop facilitators ensures workshop facilitation meets expectations. Workshop facilitation methods and workshop facilitation services use workshop facilitation skills to guide groups. Workshop facilitation training and workshop facilitators support effective outcomes.
Workshop techniques and project management
Workshop techniques, workshops, and workshops facilitated by experts help meet learning goals. Workshops for facilitators and workshops on facilitation build confidence and enable growth. Scrum (Software Development), Agile software development, and Kanban (Development) are used in facilitated workshops for project management. Business analysis and burndown chart support tracking progress. User story, software quality, and minimum viable product are often discussed. Dynamic Systems Development Method, continuous integration, continual improvement process, and PRINCE2 provide structure. Business analyst and timeboxing help keep sessions on time. Activities encourage everyone to participate, ask questions, and share experiences.