Collaborative Agile Architecture: Facilitating software design decisions

Experience leadership skills for an Agile Architect, Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Product Owner, or Tech Lead. Are you dealing with resistance and counterproductive group dynamics? Curious about how you can include the group perspective and gain all the knowledge and wisdom about Agile Architecture? Want to get everyone on board and get a consensus on decisions? Join this 2-day training!

An essential part of Agile Architecture: visual and collaborative modeling

Visual and collaborative modeling can serve multiple purposes:

1. You'll get all the knowledge needed to design the best possible architecture.
2. You'll get continuous feedback on the process.
3. You'll get a shared mindset and common ground on how to t ackle complexity.

Getting people in the room may be the easy part. Yet, running a successful session is not that easy. It requires a knowledgeable facilitator with the right skills to lead these sessions, and one tool or practice won’t do us any good. We need different perspectives on the same system, to capture and expose different models.

Lead and facilitate your own visual and collaborative modeling sessions

Facilitating a meeting where important design decisions need to be made, is not an easy thing to do. This meeting is just a group of people put together after all, and in any group, a specific dynamic is at play. Some people feel very comfortable speaking up, while others do not. Yet when facilitating, you have to listen to all the voices and understand the dynamics at play, so the group can make the best-informed decisions.

This workshop will help you facilitate these meetings better. We will mainly focus on learning how to facilitate collaborative modeling and making design decisions, though these techniques will help you in everyday team life too.

Is this training for me?

This workshop is designed to teach you a specific topic, facilitating design decisions via visual and collaborative modeling (like EventStorming, Domain Storytelling, Example Mapping, Context Mapping, and more) in an organization with IT.

Brace yourself for an immersive and collaborative experience, enabling you to practice hands-on. So, if you are an Agile Architect, Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Product Owner, or Tech Lead in an Agile organization, this training is right for you!

What will you learn during this training?

Program:

• Understand why collaborative modeling is important for Agile Architecture.
• Get an introduction to socio-technical systems.
• Learn by doing most of the following collaborative modeling practices:
  - Big picture EventStorming
  - Context Mapping
  - Example Mapping
  - Role Mapping
  - Polarity Mapping
  - Wardley Mapping
• Prepare and facilitate a meeting.
• Become aware of your own rank and how it can affect the architecture.
• Observe when knowledge is suppressed.
• Practice dealing with resistance, and get all the needed insight from the group.
• Learn how cognitive bias can make or break knowledge crunching.
• Gain the potential and wisdom from the entire group.
• Make collaborative design decisions using the basics of Deep Democracy.
• Get consensus and buy-in on design decisions for your architecture.
• Differentiate between a problem and a polarity.

If you ask yourself the following questions, this workshop is just for you:

• Why is visual collaborative design better in designing the best fit model for solving your customers' and business problems, instead of designing your system with just a couple of people?
• How can I include all insights, deal with conflict and resistance, have everyone engage in your collaboration, and make a sustainable decision that everyone can support?
• What to do with people who couldn't be there? How do we inform them and get their buy-in to the decision? And how to document and go from there?

Yes, I want to discover Agile Architecture!

After registration, you'll receive a confirmation email with practical information. If preparation is desired, you will also receive the literature by email in time. See you!

What else should I know?

• Travel and accommodation costs are not included.
• Delicious lunches are included.