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In this third post of the Remote Agile series, we address the tool at the heart of working with a distributed team as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, or Product Owner: Zoom. While Zoom is an excellent video conference application — particularly for larger groups of twelve or more attendees — by all standards, its killer feature is breakout rooms.
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Last week, we addressed basic practices and tools of remote agile with distributed teams. Based on that article, I also ran a live virtual class, the recording of which will be made available soon on the Age-of-Product’s Youtube channel. This follow-up post now delves into virtual Liberating Structures, answering the question of how we can make use of the powerful toolbox of inclusive and collaborative practices in a remote setting.
Created by Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz, Liberating Structures cover a set of easy to learn, yet powerful ways to collaborate as a team — even as a (very) large team by Scrum standards, overcoming traditional communications approaches like presentations, managed discussions, or another disorganized brainstorming at which the loudest participants tend to prevail.
During the 19th Hands-on Agile meetup, 30-plus people addressed the path to becoming a successful Scrum Master or Agile coach, following up on the “Scrum Master Career 2020 — Using Ecocycle Planning to Identify Opportunities” meetup we had in December 2019.
We used two Liberating Structures microstructures — Appreciative Interviews and Superpower Cakewalk — to delve into what lets us grow as professionals as well as individuals.
Why running a Liberating Structures immersive workshop? Since the beginning of 2019, the Hands-on Agile meetup in Berlin has been exploring how to apply Liberating Structures to Scrum. Beyond the basics, we have addressed the Sprint Retrospective, the Sprint Planning, the Product Backlog, as well as the Daily Scrum.
While the initial meetups went smoothly, the last two meetups felt rushed given that we usually have about two hours. Also, the changing composition of the meetup attendees has become more challenging: less than 10 percent of the approximately 150 participants so far have attended meetups.
Liberating Structures are a collection of interaction patterns that allow you to unleash and involve everyone in a group - from extroverted to introverted and from leaders to followers. In this series of posts, we show how Liberating Structures can be used with Scrum.
Scrum is a framework that thrives on complexity. This could be complexity related to software development, product development, or something else in which there is more unknown than known. By working empirically, the unknown is discovered by building small increments in an iterative rhythm, continuously validating assumptions about what to build and how to build it.
Managing Risk and Uncertainty in Agile
This complexity should also be taken into account when defining the strategies -- the sequence of steps - - we follow to be successful. Although everyone agrees that it's difficult (impossible?) to predict the future, strategies are commonly defined in a way that ignores this reality.