Support for facilitators and leads
Our aim in designing this interface is to help the facilitator support more effective conversations. It supports pre-existing structures yet the flow is adaptive based on emerging data and insights.
The facilitator or lead may be a rotating role within a team. Facilitation quality correlates well with conversational effectiveness. This structure brings best practice facilitation techniques to the facilitator.
The tool provide structure and adaptive flow to optimize the interactions of parties. They embed best practice question sets. Knowledge base articles provide guidance on facilitating these conversations. For more difficult sessions, or in onboarding, we offer neutral facilitators. They can lead or support.
Key challenges with retrospectives include cadence and high expectations for meaningful output. The internal team pressures can be excessive. Deliver is often number one. Managing delivery expectations whilst addressing the many variables is tough. Many non-team members don’t understand issues like code complexity, unclear requirements, and refactoring. There are many impacts from outside the team like dependencies, risks,… The list goes on. Delivering “product” and the right “product” at market speed is a tough challenge.
These tools and our service don’t solve that one! Our competency is in the design of the tools to have those conversations that enable you to achieve that. We will be there for you!
Using Xapty interplay for an interplay
Planning an interplay
There are a series of activities that the facilitators may want to do prior to kicking off an interplay or card. These are outlined in editing the interplay.
This is the process of adding a schema to the interplay edit. This involves selecting a type of scoring method. A range is selected, the schema is named, the question is added and the colour is set.
Creating an event
Here the facilitator creates and starts a data gathering event.
In this gif, the lead (type of facilitator who is also acts as a participant):
- selected one answer
- adds an event
- names the event
- links a data gathering activity with the event
- selects the event (which displays the start options)
- decides to start the event without the time
- then the lead add an answer as does a participant
Facilitating input
The facilitator has many options on how to have the team enter their input. This may have come in from a prior card. All the questions could be put up at once. Each participant could work on their own managing their own view. They can choose to see input from others or not.
In this gif, the lead manages the interface by facilitating input by
- having the group enter answers while seeing each others input
- giving some time for the group to answer the first question what went well
- then adds the second question "what didn't go well" while removing answers to "what went well"
- then adds the third question "what needs improvement" but leaves the question and answers of the second question "what didn't go well" (as a reminder)
Grouping answers
A lead or participant can group answers within a question. The purpose after initial data capture is to simplify the set of data provided. Having two similar or same answers grouped as one will help everyone focus on one answer and would not split voting.
Later grouping can be used to bring a number of answers under a broader topic. See classification process described later in this article.
In this gif, a participant
- groups two answers - creating a group name (that person will be owner of the topic - so it can be beneficial if the facilitator directs the team to engage for topics they want to be involved in. It is more of an awareness.
- A third item is added to the group
- the three items in the group are viewed
- there is a duplicated item which is removed from the group
- the duplicate item is deleted after a warning message has been displayed.
Syncing screens
When the facilitator or lead changes the screen, a small refresh button is shown to the the participant next to the event. To see the latest view, they can click on it.
The other option the facilitator or lead have is to click on the "sync event" button. In this case, the participant will be requested to move to the same screen and be kept in sync. If they accept they will be shown the same screen as facilitator or lead. If they don't, they can continue doing what they were doing. And select to refresh their screen in their own timing.
In this gif:
- the lead sets a timer, starts an event, clicks on the sync screen button
- the participant receives a warning message that the lead want them to move to a specific event.
- They select "yes" and moves to that new screen.
Classify answers
The process of classifying answering in terms of labels provide a cross-question ability to filter answers based on key criteria. The team decides that criteria. The lead or facilitator adds that criteria for participants to apply to the answers.
The work of classification can be broken up and additional labels can be requested via the provided chat.
In this step, the lead creates a label and adds it to answer. In the gif, the lead:
- clicks on the add label button
- enters the label
- selects a colour to be associated with the label
- saves the label
- then, selects an answer and selects the label, the answer is marked with this colour.
Filtering answers by labels
Once the classification process is complete, then filtering is used to take one or more topics at a time, and make decisions on the data.
In this gif, the lead (it could be the participant in their view):
- selects a specific label filter, then selects another label as the filter, the view is updated accordingly.
Voting, Scoring and Ranking
Xapty is support the ability to have multiple events in which voting, scoring or ranking can occur. Each event can have multi-questions voted, scored or ranked. When the event is closed, the results are shown. Each person can see their own and the team results.
This process provides important information. It does not have to represent a decision. It can inform a decision or a recommendation.
In the gif,
- the lead starts a voting event
- the participant enters their votes based on the single voting question
- when the event is closed, then the results are shown.
Responding to emergent data or preset plans
The features that are available to make changes to In-progress cards
Xapty Interface
- Add questions
- Edit or delete questions with no answers
- Add labels
- Edit or delete questions with no answers
- Add events
- Edit events or delete events that have not been started
Interplay Edit
- Add activities (gather, voting, scoring - add new schemas)
- Edit and delete activities (these only impact new events created)
- New questions or existing questions can be added
- New questions can be edited or deleted as long as no answers are associated with the question.
- Existing questions (data is flowed from prior card) can be deleted if there is no data. The existing questions can not be edited.
