Self Selecting Team Workshop

Introduction

This exercise provides a collaborative activity to explore how to form multiple teams when considering moving to a scaling approach.

Learning Objectives

• Who team members are and what value they can provide
• New team compositions and how they might work together

Timings

• 90 mins are best for this workshop

Materials

• Flip chart paper
• Post-it notes and markers
• Masking tape or blu tack
• Scissors
• Polaroid camera + film if possible
• Print outs of Personal Canvasses (one for each attendee)
• Print outs of Team Charters (one for each expected team)

Workshop Flow

Connections

Connections part of the activity are intended to enable the attendees to connect with the subject and with each other, and should have more context than “ice breakers” that would otherwise not have any relevance to the subject or context of the workshop.

Activities	Description
Personal Profiles	Encourage the attendees to fill out a personal canvas for themselves. Nothing too revealing as this will be available for everyone to see. Also, if there is a polaroid camera, allow the team to take portrait photos of each other to attach to the personal canvasses.

Concepts & Concrete Practice

For a majority of the activities, they will include introducing new concepts and ideas to attendees, and also provide interactive opportunities to practice them and apply the new found knowledge.

Activities	Description
Galery	Encourage the attendees to put up their personal canvases on a wall to form a gallery
Team Formation	Next ask the attendees as a large group to form multiple teams moving the personal canvasses around until they strike a good balance and satisfy these guidelines for teams: each team cannot have less than 3 or greater than 8 team members each team should have cross functional skills in the team so that it can be independent and deliver features on its own Types of teams can also include: feature teams - teams that deliver features from paper to potentially shippable specialist teams - groups of specialists that provide key skills across multiple feature teams on an as needed basis N.B. It might also be useful to write team headers that the personal canvases can be moved around
Team Charter	Once the team formation has concluded and settled down, ask the attendees to work together in their newly formed teams and complete a team charter. This activity forms the first piece of work that the new teams collaborate over.

Conclusions

Conclusion activities enable the attendees to take stock of what they have learnt and how these new ideas can be applied in practice to real world projects.

Activities	Description
Share Back	Encourage the teams to give a brief presentation on their team charter and who they are as a newly formed team