Facilitating Virtual Training and Workshops?
Here is a collection of virtual training activities that can maximise engagement at your next agile training workshop.
Facilitator Techniques:
Organising Virtual Teams – Miro
Virtual Ball Toss – Wheel Decide
Agile Training Games:
Systems Modelling Exercise – Miro
Constellations – Miro
Myth or Fact – Kahoot
Virtual Coaching Exercises:
Fear Setting - Helping people overcome fears that are holding them back
Wheel of Life - Examine the impact a decision might have on your life
Tiny Habits - A framework to help people build and break habits
Vision Chairs - Inspire action towards a goal
Improvement Canvas - Help an organisation or team find a path towards their vision
3 books to help design your own virtual agile games
Take a seat in the virtual classroom
A simple technique to create a sense of physical space in the virtual space. Add a selection of chairs to your virtual board and ask participants to place a post-it note with their name on the chair as they arrive. A great icebreaker at the start of the session to create a personal connection.
Thank You, Steve Hoyler, for the inspiration
Organising Virtual Teams
When facilitating multi-day, multi-team sessions on a board like Miro, create “team zones” with all the exercises relating to that team.
I’ve found it makes it easier for teams to find their exercises and creates an identity for the team. Colour coding makes it clearer and can also be used for team name “Red Team”
You can also use the Frames selector to quickly move between the team areas.
Virtual Ball Toss using Wheel Decide
Ball Toss is a great way in person to get insights from people in the room. To recreate this experience I’ve used Wheel Decide. Add all the participant's names to the wheel. In a debrief discussion, spin the wheel and ask the person it lands on to share their insights.
Scrum Roles and Responsibilities Game
Easily facilitated in Miro!
Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) Principles Card Sort
A simple card sort exercise to help participants get familiar with the principles of LeSS. Participants match the title of the principle with description. Miro is great for any kind of card-sort exercise
Systems Modelling (Causal Loop Diagrams)
I’ve used Miro extensively for systems modelling and can be used easily in a training setting too. You may want to ask folks to get familiar with connection lines prior to the exercise: https://help.miro.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017730733-Connection-Lines
Constellations
This can be a great way to see how people relate to different topics. In this example with Miro, you place a topic in the middle, e.g conflict, and ask people to position their post-it note in relation to it. Closer to middle = comfortable with handling conflict, Closer to edge = uncomfortable with conflict
Scrum Myth or Fact
Myth or Fact is a great connection activity when exploring any topic. I use it regularly in agile training sessions to tap into the wisdom of the crowd. Can be scaled up to many people.
Kahoot is my favourite form any quiz activities such as Myth or Fact.
You can find an example to my quiz here
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