Jolly Rajan

Agile Coach

Facilitate a Timeline Futurespective

Contents

1. Sample Agenda

2. Objective

3. Prime Directive

4. Facilitate the Futurespective

Sample Agenda

1. Objective

2. Prime Directive

3. Gather Data – Highway to the Future

4. Gather Insights – Major Themes

5. Decide What to Do

6. Appreciation Game

7. Close

Arrive at a group understanding of the strengths of

the team, discuss openly and honestly about the

challenges ahead of us, and identify executable

Action Items that can help us improve during the

next sprint and subsequent sprints.

Objective

4

Regardless of what we discover, we understand

and truly believe that everyone does the best job

they can, given what they know at the time, their

skills and abilities, the resources available, and the

situation at hand.

Prime Directive

5

Facilitate the Futurespective

Thank everyone for attending.

Read out the Objective and Prime Directive.

Emphasize the importance of open and honest

communication.

Reinforce that the comments made during the

session belong to the team.

Briefly summarize the remaining steps of the

agenda

Set the Stage

7

Imagine that this release is done and the software

is in production. We are going to look back at the

past few months and see what has happened –

scenarios you could handle without trouble and

others where you faced challenges.

Set the Futurespective Scenario

8

Timeline

START

POINT

END

POINT

We Got This

Challenges

Introduce the team to the timeline drawn on the

whiteboard.

Depending on the team size, maturity, and other

factors, you can:

• Adjust the Start Point and End Point – for e.g. from 2

Months back to NOW, from 6 Months back to NOW.

• Add a complexity scale along the y-axis – further

up/down from the center line, higher the

relevance/severity.

Introduce the Timeline

10

Ask each member of the team to take five minutes

to write their answers to the following questions on

sticky notes

• “Looking back at the past month(s), what are the

scenarios/circumstances that we had a good grasp of?”

• “Looking back at the past month(s), what are the

scenarios/circumstances that we found notably

challenging?”

Gather Data

11

Limit the number of sticky notes per person

depending on the size of the team.

Remind the team that the issues they identified

could take short/medium/long timeframe to solve.

Point out that the issues could come up at different

points along the timeline.

Invite the team members to come up to the

board/wall and place the notes on either side of the

timeline taking the time progression into account.

Tips on Data Gathering

12

We Have Data!

START

POINT

END

POINT

We Got This

Challenges

Meetings taking

too much time

Analysis Paralysis

Defects not tracked

Standups becoming

status meetings

Core working hours

Keep defects low

Team Work

Code reviews taking

too much time

Spreading knowledge

Remote work

is not easy

Tasking stories

Story board is

not up to date

Story board is

not up to date

Standups becoming

status meetings

Keep defects low

Team Work

Core working hours

Leadership support

Technical direction

Deployment strategy

UAT Support

Ask the team to gather in front of the white board

and have them group the sticky notes based on

affinity.

Give a title to the themes in each consolidated

group.

Initiate a dot voting mechanism to prune the

number of themes to talk in detail.

For a 1 hour session, plan on having 2-3 themes

to discuss.

Gather Insights

14

We Have Insights!

START

POINT

END

POINT

We Got This

Challenges

Meetings taking

too much time

Analysis Paralysis

Defects not tracked

Standups becoming

status meetings

Core working hours

Keep defects low

Team Work

Code reviews taking

too much time

Spreading knowledge

Remote work

is not easy

Tasking stories

Story board is

not up to date

Story board is

not up to date

Standups becoming

status meetings

Keep defects low

Team Work

Core working hours

Leadership support

Technical direction

Deployment strategy

UAT Support

For the themes voted as most important, ask the

team to identify one or more specific Actions that

can be taken to address the issue/topic.

Write the Actions Items down, and identify an

owner for each one.

Decide What To Do

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We Have Action Items!

START

POINT

END

POINT

We Got This

Challenges

Meetings taking

too much time

Analysis Paralysis

Defects not tracked

Standups becoming

status meetings

Core working hours

Keep defects low

Team Work

Code reviews taking

too much time

Spreading knowledge

Remote work

is not easy

Tasking stories

Story board is

not up to date

Story board is

not up to date

Standups becoming

status meetings

Keep defects low

Team Work

Split bigger stories

Pair on A/Cs

Start developer pairing

Experiment with Skype

Invest in dedicated CC line

Keep exchanging team members

between locations

Core working hours

Leadership support

Technical direction

Deployment strategy

UAT Support

End the futurespective on a high note with the

team members sharing their appreciation for other

team members or the entire team.

Appreciation Game

18

Thank the team for attending.

Take a photo of the timeline for future reference.

Agree as a group on where to “radiate” the

Action Items so they are always visible (for e.g.

post them somewhere in the team area).

Close the futurespective.

Close

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