My preferred way of supporting my clients (individuals, teams or organizations) in challenging situations is by designing custom workshops that help them leverage their own knowledge, creativity and resources to resolve their problems, and pick up some useful skills along the way.
The topics my workshops usually cover include collaboration (agile, lean, S3), organizational development and alignment, product strategy and product management, work process, software development, software architecture, software craftsmanship, technology decisions, remote collaboration, productivity and learning.
Although I rarely hold the same workshop twice in the same way, some common formats emerged over the last years:
Sociocracy 3.0 (S3) and Agile
The S3 Process Workshop
A one or two day workshop to introduce a team to the basics of agile, Scrum, Kanban and S3 and then implement S3 patterns to co-create agreements on work process and roles.
S3 Taster Workshop
This experiential 2-hour workshop will teach you the basics about Sociocracy 3.0 by employing S3 itself. It is targeted at coaches, facilitators and Scrum Masters who are up for a challenging format.
Agile Teams With S3
A 2-3 day workshop to kick-start new teams and reboot existing ones. Workshop will be designed to match the needs of the team, and can be re-arranged on the fly during the workshop as new topics emerge. Common themes include introduction to agile and lean (Scrum, eXtreme Programming, Kanban, Design Thinking), practical experience with key S3 patterns (preparing, committing to and evolving agreements, roles, performance review and improvement, processing tensions, retrospectives), getting to know each other’s skills, values and motivation, and making or updating agreements about collaboration, work process, roles, team development and team values.
Sociocracy 3.0 for Scaling Agile
This 3-hour workshop is targeted at founders and managers. I will introduce participants you to some key patterns in Sociocracy 3.0: processing tensions, drivers, proposal forming, consent decision making, the election process, patterns for circle structures. We will also look at how a sociocratic organization can host agile or lean structures, and how to establish a pull-system for implementing S3 in your organizations.
Kickstarting (or Re-Starting) Kanban With S3
Half- or full-day workshop to help a team create or update a Kanban implementation. Covers the basics of Kanban, assessment of the status quo, identifying what’s needed, designing the board (physical or digital), and making agreements on process policy. Participants get practical experience with proposal forming and consent decision making.
Organizations
Kick-starting or Rebooting (Distributed) Organizations
In 1-2 days we assess the status quo, capture tensions and emerging topics, establish driver and shared values for the organization, make essential agreements for collaboration and start projects to develop and evolve the organization. For larger groups the workshop is organized around activities in small circles and sharing and consolidation of results with the whole organization. Workshops include practical application of key S3 patterns (identify drivers, proposal forming, consent decision making, elections), and often an open space, world cafe or impact maps. For distributed organizations, we create agreements on tools and formats for online collaboration.
Leadership, Collaboration and Culture
This 3-day workshop explores models, tools and activities leaders can use to shape their areas of responsibility. We will cover delegation, motivation, values, alignment, vision and mission statements, trust, empowerment, sustainable decisions, growing structure, feedback, learning, meetings, visual management, servant leadership, root cause analysis, principle-centered leadership, complex adaptive systems, lean and agile ideas, pull vs. push, continuous improvement, design-thinking, triads, Sociocracy 3.0, Holacracy, Scrum and Kanban.
Transparency Training
How will full transparency affect your company? We will take a look at companies that already do this, benefits, strategies and resistances, with a special focus on transparent salaries. Read more
here.
Product
Product Kickoff Workshop
This 2 or 3-day workshop kick-starts a new product and makes sure the full team is engaged with
the product. We will cover everything the team needs to create a successful product, from product vision to a backlog with valuable an estimated stories, a release plan and a plan for the first iterations,team agreements about roles and collaboration, and everything else the team needs to get started the day after the workshop.
Product Milestone Workshop
Usually 4 hrs or a day that contains a retrospective on the last milestone or product increment, agreements on driver, strategy and scope for the milestone, and the creation of a prioritized backlog which integrates new features with tech spikes to minimize risk, and tech stories to reduce technical debt and invest in quality and infrastructure. If necessary, the workshop also covers mapping out and updating software architecture and agreeing on work process, definition of done and acceptance and deployment procedures.