How to set an agile team in two days

A good healthy way for me to organise my learnings has been made with writing. That’s why I’ve decided to write about “How to set an agile team in two days”, to help myself settling my experience, and help inspiring other agile coaches on making this happen. It might not be applied 100% on your environment, and your personal touch should and must be added, but can be a good starting point.

So let’s get started on my learnings as a quick guideline:

Always start with a team kick off

I recommend at least 2 to 3 days for a team kick off, gives you enough time to discuss topics such as team values, roles and expectations, team routines and general agreements/team guidelines. I’ve been working with distributed teams for almost 4 years and my experience has taught me that a good start is with everyone physically in the same room. Make a team event outside the working space and fly everyone into the same location, allowing people to meet face to face.

This is one of the most valuable starting points. Why? We can make use of the opportunity for team building games and observe body language. Might sound ridiculous, but in my opinion, apart from the activities you are running, coffee breaks are key moments, and very powerful for the team. It is the golden opportunity to share personal topics and create empathy.

Building a connection

Start with a game like “Tower of Power” or “Human Knot”. It’s fun and gives you a good snapshot of the team personality (introverts or extroverts, natural leaders or passive participants).

Introducing each other to the team. Get to know each other’s values, passions, goals and background. One of my favorite exercises is “Personal Maps” from Management 3.0. The last time I’ve used it, I’ve added two twists to make it different:

• I’ve handled everyone an A3 paper and asked them to draw a circle in the middle,

• In one minute, they had to scribble the person standing in front of them.

It’s a fun way to break the ice and challenges the team to observe the colleague in more detail. Not everyone is gifted to draw, but that is not the goal.

After that,

• They exchanged the paper and scribbled their personal map.

• Each one placed it on a wall and presented it to the team,

And the second twist was added, I’ve challenged them to connect with a wool string everything that we had in common. The result is visually self-explanatory. Even though some had just met, they were already connected and have a lot in common. Breaks the ice and allows them to have more topics to talk beside work.

Helps to build an opportunity to see us all as a team.

Finding a common ground base

As being a remote team, communication is key. For that reason, in my perspective, it is crucial that team values and agreements are made in the first team meeting.

I’ve used “Impromptu Networking” from Liberating structures to help them find their general goals and challenges they expect to face.

Start with a powerful and inspiring question such as “What do we as a team expect to achieve” or “What do I expect to get from this group?”.

Let the group grab a coffee and start talking and sharing. In a few precious minutes, they’ve warm up their brains and get in the mood for a good discussion.

Next step could be finding working agreements, considering that the teams are working in an agile methodology. I have mixed some exercises and found a way to make it easy and straightforward.

First I have asked the team to think on the meetings that they find the most relevant and mandatory for them. Most of the times, teams arrived with the basic: Stand Up, Refinement, Planning, Review and Retrospective. We listed all on a whiteboard, built a chart and added the 5W’s questions:

Why we want to do it?- Describing the goal of the meeting to make sure all agree that it is not a waste of time.

What do we want to do during the meeting? — Setting the agenda and how we are running it.

When do we want to do it? — Defining the frequency of it, day of the week, time of the day and the duration.

Who do we need to have in the meeting? Who is mandatory to be part of it, who facilitates the meeting and optional participants are helping to define and avoid team misunderstandings.

Where are we doing it? Think about the setup, can it be done at our desks with Slack? Do we need a decent meeting room with a VC, or can we meet in our team space?

With a board, post-its and the team thoughts, in approximately 30 min you are ok to go and build your team calendar/basic routines.

It’s ok if you have a simple plan if the team doesn’t want too many meetings. Establish a timeframe for first experiments. It will allow the team to revisit how the meetings are running, improve what is not working, remove a meeting or even adding a new one, like Planning 2, Technical refinement, etc.. The needs will come sooner or later.

Make sure all share the same expectations

Next step is a hard one, but in my opinion important to do in person.

Defining team “Roles and Expectations”. It is pretty easy to assume everyone shares the same idea about what is behind someone’s role, or even their own role. This can lead the team to unpredictable conflicts in a short timeframe. To make sure that we all share the same knowledge and do not just assume that something should be done by someone.

Recently I’ve attended a Management 3.0 workshop and we played “Delegation Poker”. It was the first time I’ve played and immediately fell in love…A playful way to make a hard meeting fun and friendly.

Last time I’ve used it, I gave a twist to it. I’ve first asked each participant to write down on post-its what, in their eyes, are their roles in the team.

Each one presented it and we simply voted if we all agreed that they were suitable, or out of scope for the role.

After we did it we played the cards of “Delegation Poker” to help us define how much responsibility each one of us shared on that role, and how we should interact in each decision or role task.

The result was a complete list that helps us to start working and collaborating without assuming things. It might happen that some task was not taken into consideration, but it is easier to define in a quick round how to deal with it, and if it makes sense to include it or not.

Have fun and enjoy meals together

A kick-off should not only be a group of people in a room discussing and post it decision making…

What else motivates people than a good restaurant, good food, good wine and a few laughs?

Get a good restaurant, with a cosy and casual ambiance that enables the team to talk and get to know each other better. My first choice is a round table that allows everyone to seat face to face.

I’ve also created an exercise called “Pizza talks” for a lunch break with the team. It’s really easy to do it, and the rules are easy. I’ve asked everyone to grab a slice and search for someone who had picked the same flavour. Them they had to share a success story they had in the past month or with the previous team. After they both shared, they would grab another and repeat until they were done.

But having fun is not only eating, and my last awesome finding was “Happy Salmon” game. It starts with the package itself, the salmon shape bag made everyone in the room very curious and eager to find out more about it.

It’s a good game to play, you can use it as an energizer and you can even try different iterations to work communication patterns with the team. I’ve used different approaches:

• only talking,

• only using body language,

• only looking to the other person’s cards and freestyle.

At the end you can debrief what the team felt was more efficient and how they felt about it. Most of the times we reached the same conclusion: Communication is key to making a good team collaboration.

Document what happened and make posters for the team space

Wrap up all the process, decisions and conclusions made in the kick-off.

It is really important to provide guidelines for the team to have it. Might happen that after a while something is forgotten (like a meeting goal being skipped) and you need to revisit it again.

I also recommend making a nice poster with the team values, goals and basic agreements. It gives identity to the team and personality to the team space. It can also be a motivator when feeling lost at some point and gives them camaraderie.

Get feedback

As more experienced I am getting into agile, the more value I give to constructive feedback and get more space for learning and improving myself.

That is the reason why at the end of each day and in the end of the workshop I collect the team mood with a “Happiness door” and ask for feedback in a survey form.

The lines above are my two cents for a basic kick off.

Bellow is an example of an agenda and approximate time for each activity)

DAY 1

• Present yourselves to the team (name, role and superhero | duration: 10 min)

• Play a game (“Tower of Power” or “Human knot” |duration: 40 min)

• Impromptu Networking (duration: 26 min total, every round 4 min, debrief 10 min)

Personal Map (duration: 90 min

• Happiness door

• Dinner

DAY 2

• Welcome coffee

• 5 W’s — Working Agreements (duration: 60 min)

• Pizza talks (duration: 90 min)

• Ice breaker (duration: 30 min)

• Roles & Expectations (delegation board) (duration 90 min)

• Kick-off Retro (duration 60 min)

• Happiness door

Have fun and be brave!