Product Owner As A Facilitator
Occasionally the Product Owner may need to provide some facilitation when needed, and so here are a few things to think about when facilitating discussions with teams or stakeholders.
Safety
In a Sprint Retrospective for example, it is imperative that the attendees are at ease and can have honest and open conversation about what is not working well and suggest insightful improvements. A key ingredient for this to happen is to ensure that the Scrum Team feel safe enough to openly express their opinions in a supportive environment that values their contribution.
The facilitator when facilitating such events should try to provide a safe environment for the open and honest conversations to happen. This may require explicit intervention if a conversation begins to turn into accusations or blaming in order to bring the group back to a supportive mindset, or may involve implicit hosting behind the scenes such as organising our Sprint Review to be done in a café or other creative environment outside of the workplace for example.
The provision of safety is hard won and easily lost, and so the facilitator may need to be very attentive throughout the event or group meeting to ensure that it goes well and provides the highest value possible.
Equal Voice
It is common in many group meetings or events for dominant characters to take control over the current discussion, and for the perspectives of those attendees that think more and talk less to be lost in the conversation.
The facilitator in these situations may need to ensure that the quieter participants can voice their opinions freely with just as much airtime as those louder attendees in order for the group to make the right decisions and avoid bias. This may involve direct intervention to stop the group talking and listen to a quieter attendee’s perspective, draw attention to a particular point that was made, or more implicit approaches such as using a whiteboard to record what was said as a visible reference and reminder for the team.
Consensus or Majority
Two main approaches that may be useful for the group conversation, depending upon the context and the objective of the discussion, is to consider whether a decision should be by consensus of if the majority rules.
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Consensus involves catering for the outlier opinions and perspectives as well as the mainstream with explicit efforts made to hear from the individuals in the group that have a different opinion. The facilitator in this instance should encourage the group to listen and consider these outlier opinions before they make their decisions. Consensus may be useful for technical discussions for example, where the outlier opinion has seen something that the main group has not, and yet could have a significant impact on the outcome. |
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Majority rules by comparison caters for the majority and may be a quick group decision. The outlier opinion in this instance is expected to be of interest, but may not have such a direct impact on the outcome and hence, can be persuaded by the majority. Deciding upon which cafe to hold the Sprint Retrospective for example, may be a majority decision that has low impact and can persuade the outliers to agree with the larger group. The facilitator in this instance may encourage such discussions with quick votes, Fist of Five or other quick surveys of the group decision. |