Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills

Become a Better Facilitator to Improve Scrum Team Interactions

Our Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™ course is a highly interactive one-day course designed to help Scrum practitioners develop a facilitator’s mindset, proficiency in facilitation skills, and learn when and how to select effective techniques for various circumstances. Strong facilitation skills enable better problem-solving, more effective Scrum events and greater team alignment, all leading to better outcomes.

A key tenet of Scrum is to put problem-solving and decision-making in the hands of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Framework creates venues for this to happen and the Scrum Values help create an environment in which each Scrum Team member’s voice can be heard. However, team interactions don’t always go well. Sometimes team members lose sight of goals, don’t fully engage and/or can’t reach agreement. Effective facilitation can guide the team toward their desired outcomes.

• Module 1: Facilitation Principles and Scrum
• Module 2: Applying Facilitation Skills and Techniques
• Module 3: Improving Facilitation Skills

The course also includes a free attempt at the globally recognized Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) certification exam.

What you will learn

In this one-day skills-building course, participants will learn how to become better facilitators to improve interactions with their Scrum Teams, stakeholders and customers. They will focus on how to adopt facilitation as a stance and enable the Scrum Values. Students will address a series of common Scrum-related scenarios by applying several facilitation techniques that they can add to their collection of agile practices. They will create and leave with their own facilitation “plan” to improve their next team discussion or Scrum event.

The course uses a combination of instructor-led and activity-based learning where you will work together with other participants in teams. As a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST), I bring my own facilitator experiences and stories to the class and use my skills as professional trainer to deliver the material using my own unique delivery style. The result is an engaging, enjoyable learning experience where you gain a solid understanding of facilitation principles, learn a good number of techniques, and the role the Scrum Values play in enhancing healthy collaboration in Scrum Teams.

Over this one day, you will see why facilitation is crucial for growing effective Scrum Teams.

Course Learning Objectives

• Students develop facilitation skills and a facilitator’s mindset.
• Students are challenged to think how to apply the facilitation principles that experienced facilitators fall back on when interactions are difficult.
• Students will have a clear understanding of the roles that facilitation principles and the Scrum Values play in enhancing healthy collaboration in Scrum Teams.
• Students explore how facilitation can address challenging scenarios most Scrum Teams encounter.
• Students apply facilitation skills and techniques to improve the Scrum events and other interactions.
• Students understand how to encourage diverse perspectives, while bringing the team together to reach decisions.
• Students experience the elements of group dynamics and how they influence the decision-making process.
• Students leave class with a toolbox of facilitation techniques and understand how to apply them in different circumstances.

Who should attend

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills course is appropriate for any industry where teams are working to solve complex problems. It is particularly beneficial for those people within an organization who are interested in learning how to use facilitation to enhance their team’s success, including Scrum Masters, Product Owners, managers, and Scrum Team members.

As collaboration is a key factor in the success of any initiative, and as every single individual can step in when needed, it is important that any Scrum Team member, including the Scrum Master and the Product Owner, understand how to facilitate, and have a number of techniques and practices at hand to support the team and its stakeholders.

Format

You will work in small teams. You learn through team assignments, discussions and hands-on exercises.
Be ready to challenge and be challenged.
This course will be taught in English.

Prerequisites

You will make the most of the class if you:

• Have studied the Scrum Guide (required) – available at https://scrumguides.org/.
• Took the Scrum Open assessment.
• Have already an understanding of Scrum either through working on a Scrum Team, or through taking part in an Applying Professional Scrum course, or similar.
• Have been on or are closely involved in solving complex problems, such as (but not limited to), building or enhancing a product or service.

PS. During the course there is no time to explain basic Scrum concepts such as the Scrum Events, Artifacts or Accountabilities. This is considered to be known.

Assessment and Certification

• All participants completing the Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills course will receive a password to attempt the Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) assessment. The industry-recognized PSFS certification requires a minimum passing score of 85%. PSFS class participants who attempt the PSFS assessment within 14 days of receiving their free password and do not score at least 85% will be granted a 2nd attempt at no additional cost.
• Students are able to claim Project Management Institute (PMI) PDU credits: 7 PDUs after attending a one-day Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) course.
• Please note that PMI PDUs are earned for course attendance and not for passing a PSFS assessment. Students can claim PDUs under PMI’s “Education courses provided by other third-party providers” category.

Steven, Your Trainer

I live to energise, encourage and inspire individuals and teams so they successfully overcome the challenges on their path, making them more complete humans.

Facilitating Scrum training allows me to do just that.

Want to know more? Check out 

• my Scrum.org profile
• my LinkedIn profile

Why collaborate with Scrum.org

Scrum.org training provides a hands-on, activity-based learning experience using a consistent set of learning objectives around the world. Each course explores real-world challenges to help students apply what they learn in their roles once back at work.

On our path to becoming a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST), we had to prove an important number of years of Scrum experience. Once we applied, we went through an extensive process including: interviews, validation of knowledge, training approach, peer reviews and more.

The above combined, Scrum.org provides, according to us, the highest quality Scrum training and certified Professional Scrum Trainers (PSTs) to teach them.

We, as Professional Scrum Trainers, bring our own style, experience, and stories to the courses, using the same  learning objectives as our basis so that all students are learning from the same solid basis. 

We are a proud member of the Scrum.org Professional Training Network™(PTN). As PTN member we align with the Scrum Values and are committed to improving the profession of product delivery in part by providing Scrum.org training.

Need more info?

For additional information about this and our other Professional Scrum training modules you can contact Steven Deneir at steven@boostyourscrum.com or via 0032 477 26 93 18.
Visit our website at www.boostyourscrum.com.

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