From Los Angeles, living in Berlin

I don't use Microsoft Planner, but hopefully it has a CSV import now. If it still doesn't use this guide to create an automation. Copy the stickies in miro and paste into excel, export as csv. Import csv into Planner via csv import or the automation in the guide. I hope that works!

@Leah Zipperstein This is a problem all the time, and as a facilitator is super hard to multi-task your brain between what you're doing, what's happening next, and time keeping. I've found that there's always one person who also hates when topics get off course (it's not just the facilitator!) so I ask for a volunteer in the room to help me stop tangents & help time keep open discussions so we can ensure that we reach the goal of the workshop that day. They are super happy to raise their hand and be the bad guy/gal. Even better is to give them an honorary name like "tangent sheriff" or "time captain" whatever you like. The bonus is you have a little helper who partners with you and the job doesn't take much work. Then you're not the party pooper and the person keeping time is well known and already liked by the rest of the team.

@Bill Clarke Yes that sounds interesting!

@Adamma Stekovics 9pm works for me. What day now? I can do Friday (Sept 1) or sometime next week. I can create a whatsapp group so we can coordinate easier on the phone. If you're interested, DM me your whatsapp number.

Hey everyone, I created a Whatsapp group for women facilitators since there's many who want to connect. We will setup a call very soon and we can discuss logistics there too. You can join here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DQCVOK6W5jsIKgL5TM8Rns

Making personas also comes to mind. Roles are boring, but if you name then, draw them out, give other characteristics it seems more "alive". Like this is Lisa, she's the HR director, her role does x, she loves to do y, etc.

Hey @Sabian Sarasati, I've done these before but it depends on where they're at with ideation. Usually there's already lots of ideas not a blank slate. It also depends on where they like to get their ideas: from customer issues, existing tech issues, CEO wishlist, research, competitors features, etc. I think the most important part is that it maps to the product or company strategy pillars so it's not just a free-for-all and has some focus on what they need to do in the next year. I did one where there were already many ideas and there was already a product strategy. So it was kind of one step ahead. But they wanted to make a roadmap from that. It's probably a bit different but I asked everyone the week before to add every single idea they had to a Miro board, and color the post-its by tshirt size (blue = small, red = med, etc.). Then on the day, I had boxes for the 6 strategies for our company and asked them to add their ideas to the buckets. If it didn't meet part of our product strategy we put it in the "titanic" box (sinking it away to not work on it). Then we put our best guesses to show on a monthly calendar with product teams as the rows. We popped in each one to visualize what this would look like and if it was feasible. We then moved things around and put more in the Titanic box as we realized what was important and had further discussions from there. I can see how you could also flip this around to have the buckets as the sources of product ideas. Ex: buckets could be "our top 5 problems in our product" then to add ideas that fix those instead. Then go on to the capacity and roadmap planning I mentioned above as the next step.

I'm interested in a buddy :)

@Tim Daines Super helpful Tim!

I created a workshop for senior leadership and c levels to feel the squeeze of deadlines. We did a LEGO building workshop to teach them Agile principles and rituals, and also play the roles of the engineering groups. They also only had about 12 min sprints, 2x to build a house. It really showed them the stress of building something with very limited info.

Hey all, I created a 2 hour workshop to show the fundamentals. I pasted the timing below for an example of the two rounds you would do. You hand each team a bunch of legos and a mission to build a house. No other info, just like many dev teams don't get much to work on. You give out a few roles of EM, Designer, Engineers (builders), and PM. The reasoning is two-fold: I want everyone to understand Agile without it being boring, play the roles and understand a walk in other team members shoes by doing it. #2 I wanted the senior leaders to have empathy for the teams who go through this each day as they send random requests to understand how disruptive it is. Our management team was pretty guilty of that. That's where the few "surprises" come in during the sprint to feel that stress. Timing: 1. Presentation on the simulation, roles and rules, present list of teams (10 min) 2. Backlog: Team breaks down the problem, prioritizes and estimates (10 min) 3. Build (60 min) Sprint 1 (15 min) Demos for Sprint 1 (5 min) Sprint 2 (15 min) Demos for Sprint 2 (10 min) One sprint cycle is (20 min) - Planning, 3 minutes - Sprint, 7 minutes - Review (demo), 5 minutes for the whole group - Retrospective 5 min. 1. Do a final group retro on the workshop TOTAL: 2 hours