1. Ask for permission
You may feel nervous about managing the group. That’s natural. Even the most experienced Facilitators get nervous. And since structured meetings are uncommon in most companies, your team may not be used to the idea. What should you do to start things off right?
A helpful tactic (learned from our friend Charles Warren, a former Googler) is to ask the group for permission up front. Tell the team you’re going to facilitate and that you’ll keep track of time and process so they don’t have to. Then just say, “Sound okay?”
Don’t expect everyone to shout “Yes!” in unison, but because you laid it out there, and because you gave them the opportunity to object (which they likely won’t), everyone will feel better about the dynamic. More importantly, so will you.
2. ABC: Always be capturing
We don’t want to freak you out, but if you’re playing the role of Facilitator, Monday is your busiest day. In addition to leading the group through all of the activities, you’re responsible for something simple but important: recording key ideas on the whiteboard. Or as entrepreneur Josh Porter likes to say: “Always be capturing.”
All day Monday, the Facilitator should have a whiteboard marker in her hand. Throughout the day, you’ll synthesize the team’s discussion into notes on the whiteboard. Most of the time, you’ll be able to follow the exercises in this book. But not everything will fit into our templates. Feel free to improvise as you go, making lists of interesting information, drawing additional diagrams, and so on.
As you go, ask the team, “Does this look right?” or “How should I capture that?” And when the conversation starts to stall out, you can nudge it to conclusion by saying, “Is there a good way we can capture this thinking and move on?”
Remember, the whiteboard is the shared brain of the team. Keep it organized and you’ll help everyone be smarter, remember more, and make better decisions, faster.
3. Ask obvious questions
The Facilitator needs to say “Why?” a lot and ask questions to which everybody already knows the answer. Covering the obvious ensures there’s no misinterpretation, and it often draws out important details that not everyone knows about.
In our sprints with startups, we have an unfair advantage: We’re outsiders who don’t know anything, so our dumb questions are genuine. In your sprint, you’ll have to act like an outsider.
4. Take care of the humans
As Facilitator, you’re not only running the sprint—you’ve got to keep your sprint team focused and energized. Here are some of our tricks:
Take frequent breaks
Breaks are important. We like to take a ten-minute break every sixty to ninety minutes, since that’s about as long as anyone can stay focused on one task or exercise. Breaks also give everyone an opportunity to have a snack and get coffee. When the team is not hungry and/or suffering from caffeine withdrawal, your job as Facilitator is much easier.
Lunch late
Eat lunch at 1 p.m., and you’ll miss the rush at most cafeterias or restaurants. It also splits the day neatly in half. You’ll work for three hours, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., then another three, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Eat light and often
Provide good, nutritious snacks in the morning and throughout the day. And be careful of eating a heavy lunch. No burritos, pizza, foot-long subs, or all-you-can-eat buffets. We learned the hard way (Indian food burritos, with tortillas made of naan) how these lunch foods can kill a group’s momentum in the afternoon.
5. Decide and move on
Throughout the sprint week, there are many large and small decisions. For the biggest decisions, we’ve given you a script (like Monday’s target, or the narrowing of sketches you’ll find on Wednesday). But you’ll have to handle some smaller decisions on your own.
Slow decisions sap energy and threaten the timeline of the sprint. Don’t let the group dissolve into unproductive debates that aren’t moving you toward a decision. When a decision is slow or not obvious, it’s your job as Facilitator to call on the Decider. She should make the decision so the team can keep moving.