Edward De Bono's Creative Thinking meets with Agile
Slide Deck used in the conference: http://www.slideshare.net/RathinaKumar2/edward-de-bono-agile
Building 'happy' teams is one of the cherished goals for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters. In my coaching experience, all the high-performance agile teams have joy and happiness as the core to their performance.
I have taken Edward De Bono as my support and his work on creative thinking as my guide for this purpose. Edward De Bono's crative thinking patterns include several aspects like curiosity, provocation, synergy, fun, hypotheis etc. Edward De Bono's work can be applied in every field where we look for creative outcomes.
These creative thinking patterns can be adopted by agile coaches/scrum masters to improve their effectiveness in building high-performance teams.
This session has exercises that are derived from Edward De Bono's work on creative thinking patterns. These exercises can be used by agile coaches/scrum masters with appropriate modifications in their real world contexts.
Join me in building "happy" teams with the help of Edward De Bono.
Outline/structure of the Session
SESSION OUTLINE:
1) Minutes(00 - 5) - Context Setting
2) Minutes(06 - 40) - Reivew Edward De Bono's creative patterns - See examples, Do exercises for creative thinking patterns - curiosity, provocation, synergy, fun, hypotheis. Brainstorm real world contexts where these patterns can be applied in agile environment.
3) Minutes(40 - 45) - questions and closing
Learning Outcome
Provides very powerful tools for scrum masters and agile coaches to build happy teams.
Target Audience
Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Agile Leaders, Agile Philosophers, Agile Trainers, Creative Thinkers
Links
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Comments
Hi Rathna,
Thanks for this topic.
Since this falls under 90 minutes workshop - I love to see lot of exercise and games than hearing theory. Can you provide some more pointers
Thanks,
Who likes to hear theory? Practically no one. :-) But it is the theory, that helps us to assess practical situation.
I see your point. Agree with you that 90 minutes workshop can not be theoretical and boring.
Please see my response to Doc as well.
Rathina:
Are there games or other learning exercises in this session? I would assume from the title that there are, but do not see them explicitly in the write-up. It looks like section 1 and 2 are lecture with section 3 having some game(s) and section 4 is...?
- Doc
Section 4 is drawing conclusions based on industry study, research and our exercices in the previous sessions.
Section 3 has several exercises - some of them require team work; some individual.
Section 2 needs more elaboration which I will provide soon.
Session 1 looks at current industry practices, how differnt companies/teams deal with the the question of happiness. So I would not say it is a theoretical lecture. It will be of practical interest.
I have revisited my workshop content. I have fine-tuned it with couple of game designs that I have successfully adopted in the teams that I coach.
Section1: (15 minutes) – looks at current industry practices on measuring team happiness and team morale. How different companies deal with the question of measuring happiness.
Section2: (30 minutes) – explains the idea of “fun” as the key motivator behind high-performance teams. We will play 2 games designed to learn agile concepts. These gamifications can be adopted as it is for teams that you coach. The game design involves pen, pre-printed cards and teams playing to win.
Section 3: (45 minutes) – Covers Edward De Bono’s creative patterns – how these patterns can be adopted in agile environment. These are not games – but creative exercises based on Edward De Bono’s work. Some are team work; some individual thought process.
Finally I will tie session with message that “Fun is not at the expense of performance, it is one of the prime motivator for high-performance”.
Hope this gives the much needed details and clarity.
Curious to know how this fits under scaling agile. What about this is specific to scaling?
I see it from the perspective of how the teams can benefit at large through agile adoption using news techniques. While scaling agile adoption at enterprise level, I believe practices like focus on productivity makes it stressful endeavor than making it fun-filled one.
This is not an agile tool or nor to do with agile life-cycle topic.
Thanks Rathna for the proposal. The workshop sounds interesting. Could you please share the slides and video (from any past presentations also) so we can assess your on-stage presence and presentation style?
Done.
Apologies for being in slumber for a while. Here is a webinar that I did couple of years ago. The topic is still relevant and you can view my presentation style.
http://www.techgig.com/webinars/Project-Management-Leadership-Series-Session-13-Solving-People-and-Performance-Puzzle-in-Agile-Teams-196
My style is interactive / socratarian and with some humor sprinkled. Have received standing ovations from audience and recognition as "highly engaging speaker" at several conferences.
(Thanks for the opportunity to blow my own trumpet!)
Thanks for the clarification Rathna. Can you please update the proposal to focus on just the Edward De Bono’s creative patterns for 45 mins?
Hi Rathna, Edward De Bono's creative patterns seems something unqiue for the conference participants. Can we just focus on them and reduce the workshop time to 45 mins?
Hi Naresh - Thanks for your suggestion.
I can focus on Edward De Bono's creative patterns - I have 4 exercises (2 of them team games). I guess I can rush them into 45 minutes.
Based on the comments from fellow contributors I have improvised the second part by gamifying 2 agile concepts based on gabe zuckerman model. These gamifications are highly engaging team work I use for coaching where fun is key motivator for learning.
Essentially, I can do the entire session in 1:30 min where I will include gamification of agile concepts. Or I can just do Edward De Bono creative patterns only limiting it to 45 min.
My preference is t o do entire 90 min workshop as participants can take the gamification as the takeaway for their coaching as well. I will leave it to your team to make the final call.
Regards
Rathina