{"id":6986,"date":"2024-08-30T14:43:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T13:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thescrumacademy.com\/?p=6986"},"modified":"2024-10-16T15:07:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T14:07:15","slug":"want-better-scrum-learn-how-to-create-and-sustain-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thescrumacademy.com\/es\/2024\/08\/30\/want-better-scrum-learn-how-to-create-and-sustain-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Want Better Scrum? Learn How to Create and Sustain Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

A common complaint one hears about Scrum, especially from Developers, is that there are too many meetings.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that is entirely true.\u00a0 I think when people complain about \u201ctoo many meetings\u201d in Scrum what they are really complaining about is there are too many bad meetings that distract them from doing the real work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each of the core Scrum meetings, <\/span>Sprint Planning<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Retrospectives<\/span><\/a>, Daily Scrum and Sprint Review, exists to advance the real work of the Scrum Team.\u00a0 All are required and all require the participation of the entire Scrum Team.\u00a0 Ideally, they are collaborative and interactive events.\u00a0 When they are not, it\u2019s usually because there is little, or no, design.\u00a0 Based on my twenty years of working with Scrum and Agile teams, I can confidently say that collaboration is a designed experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meeting Design is Important, But Not Enough<\/span><\/h2>\n

While meeting design is a very important factor to create a collaborative experience, you also have to have an effective facilitator; one that knows how to create and sustain dialogue.\u00a0 Without a facilitator, most meetings lose their focus and revert to an <\/span>open discussion<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 If you want to have better meetings in Scrum you need both good meeting design and good facilitation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this series of articles, I am going to share with you what good facilitation looks like.\u00a0 Over the course of these ten plus articles, I will share with you the facilitative listening techniques that facilitators use to create and sustain dialogue.\u00a0 If you want to go deeper, I recommend that you read Sam Kaner\u2019s fantastic book, <\/span>The Facilitator\u2019s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, 3nd Edition<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 In addition to sharing these techniques, I will share examples from my work as well as some personal commentary on how to get the most value from these practices.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first technique you must master as a facilitator is called <\/span>paraphrasing<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 We start with paraphrasing because this skill is the basis for many of the other facilitative listening techniques we will highlight later in the series.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is it?<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>Paraphrasing is not much more than your classic <\/span>active listening<\/span><\/a>. If you are familiar with active listening in your regular day-to-day life, you will have no problems with paraphrasing.\u00a0 The three steps of paraphrasing are:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Use tentative language.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. In your own words, state what you think you heard the speaker say.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Check-in with the speaker to see that you correctly restated their idea.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Why You Want to Use It<\/span><\/h2>\n

    Paraphrasing is a powerful facilitative listening technique because it allows the speaker the opportunity to hear their thoughts <\/span>played back to them by a neutral party without judgment or criticism.\u00a0 As one of the three fundamental facilitative listening techniques, this is an important skill to master since it will be used over and over again.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Example<\/span><\/h2>\n

    Here is a scenario that shows the basics of paraphrasing.\u00a0 Jaya is an engineering manager for a Scrum Team that is debating how much time to dedicate for new features versus reducing technical debt.\u00a0 Jaya wants the team to deliver more features while the Scrum Team wants to reduce technical debt.\u00a0 Rama is a Scrum Master acting as the facilitator to this conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n