#advanced facilitation

The Agile mindset demands frequent interaction among its project stakeholders. Perhaps more so with Scrum, than other frameworks. From Daily Stand-up meetings to Sprint Retrospective meetings held every one to four weeks, having a formal facilitator or being a facilitative participant adds tremendously to successful Sprints. So, more importantly, who facilitates Scrum facilitation and when? The…

In an earlier article (see: Risk Analysis – Method and Questions to Facilitate a Portfolio of Projects) we defined “best” by projects that scored favorably in an Innovation test by looking at the relative technology and market risks associated with new ideas (eg, process, product, etc.).  With this article (geared for experienced facilitators and methodologists, but beneficial to beginners, as…

Strong Facilitation Skills Guarantee More Successful Meetings

When you have the ability to do something well, you are skilled. What abilities or facilitation skills make you a highly-talented facilitator? How many facilitation skills exist?

There must be more than one right answer to describe facilitation skills.  Depending on what you read, there may be:

6 Essential Facilitator Skills

9 Meeting Facilitation Skills

9 Facilitation Skill Competencies

Top 11…

Meeting Killers: Eight Ways to Kill A Meeting and Your Reputation

Below are eight habits we call meeting killers that every facilitator, or meeting leader, must avoid. #1 – Neglect to prepare your participants in advance.

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone asks: “So, what’s this all about?”

People attending a meeting should know the purpose of the meeting before they accept.  Since their input is presumably valuable, provide them with a pre-read…

The Primer on Facilitation Certification

With facilitation today there is no common, shared body of knowledge. In part, because facilitation is a fuzzy word and widely applied, there is no single definition — making facilitation certification fuzzy as well.

In North America, there are three primary methods for certifyingprofessional skills and knowledge.  None of the methods is necessarily superior or inferior when compared with each…

How You Can Convert Requirements or Fuzzy Goals into SMART Objectives

Meeting participants do not argue about verbs and nouns because they focus on modifiers.  Modifiers include adjectives, adverbs and sometimes phrases that describe verbs and nouns. For example, participants won’t argue that “the job needs to be done”.  Rather, they will argue that the job needs to be done well and done quickly.  What qualifies as well and quicklybecomes the focus of their…