Mini-Openspace

[Dave Rooney]

Hi folks,

I was talking to a team lead today who is having his geographically
diverse team come together here next week. I've facilitated several
retrospectives for this group (as best as can be done over the wire),
and he was asking if his team should do one while everyone is together.
There isn't any completion of a specific milestone, but rather he would
like to have the team itself come up with the issues and ideas about
which they would like to talk.

This sounded like a good fit for Openspace, but there would only be 10
people. Has anyone run an Openspace session with a group that small?
Has anyone adapted Openspace ideas to be able to work with a small group?

I'm really interested to hear any ideas you may have.

Thanks!

Dave...

[Jeremy Lightsmith]

Lean coffee (http://leancoffee.org/) is also something that's pretty cool for groups of that size. It's a shorter (timewise) form, but it comes out of open space principles. It might be interesting to start with a lean coffee just to get some stuff out on the table. Then from there you could do an open space or something else.

----
Jeremy Lightsmith
Helping Software Teams Get More Productive with tools like Agile, Lean, & Rails
312-953-1193
http://jeremylightsmith.com/
http://facilitationpatterns.org/ (book in progress)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremylightsmith

Dave...

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[Steve Rogalsky]

+1 to that idea. I've started to use Lean Coffee for some retrospectives and like it. If there are issues that need more investigation or exploration, those can turn into various open spaces.

 

Steve

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[Ted M. Young [@jitterted]]

Another +1 on Lean Coffee. For a group that small, I don't think having an Open Space would actually work very well (though that's totally based on my intuition with absolutely no experience or data to back it up).

;ted

[Dave Rooney]

Jeremy/Steve/Ted - thanks for the LeanCoffee suggestion.

Ted - yeah, that's what I was thinking, hence my question here. :)

Thanks!

Dave...

On 2013-04-22 4:11 PM, Ted M. Young [@jitterted] wrote:

Another +1 on Lean Coffee. For a group that small, I don't think having an Open Space would actually work very well (though that's totally based on my intuition with absolutely no experience or data to back it up).

;ted

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:39 PM, Steve Rogalsky <st...@rogalsky.ca> wrote:

+1 to that idea. I've started to use Lean Coffee for some retrospectives and like it. If there are issues that need more investigation or exploration, those can turn into various open spaces.

 

Steve

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Jeremy Lightsmith <jeremy.l...@gmail.com> wrote:

Lean coffee (http://leancoffee.org/) is also something that's pretty cool for groups of that size. It's a shorter (timewise) form, but it comes out of open space principles. It might be interesting to start with a lean coffee just to get some stuff out on the table. Then from there you could do an open space or something else.

----
Jeremy Lightsmith
Helping Software Teams Get More Productive with tools like Agile, Lean, & Rails
312-953-1193
http://jeremylightsmith.com/
http://facilitationpatterns.org/ (book in progress)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremylightsmith

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:10 PM, Dave Rooney <davero...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

I was talking to a team lead today who is having his geographically diverse team come together here next week.  I've facilitated several retrospectives for this group (as best as can be done over the wire), and he was asking if his team should do one while everyone is together.  There isn't any completion of a specific milestone, but rather he would like to have the team itself come up with the issues and ideas about which they would like to talk.

This sounded like a good fit for Openspace, but there would only be 10 people.  Has anyone run an Openspace session with a group that small?  Has anyone adapted Openspace ideas to be able to work with a small group?

I'm really interested to hear any ideas you may have.

Thanks!

Dave...

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[Jon Kern]

i would imagine the team could come up with some topics in advance… maybe surrounding the trials and tribulations of working in distributed fashion… or at least tell them to jot things down and come prepared.

i was fortunate enough to be in a few retros where the talented angela harms was good at facilitating -- and we were a group of 15-20. in the earlier ones, we had on-the-fly post-it note writing. later on, we collected the retro topic post-its on a wall as they came up, convening a retro when it hit some limit. 

i'm guessing we were lean-coffee-esque. collect topics, vote, discuss in cumulative vote-count descending order.

Jon Kern

blog: http://technicaldebt.com

twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA

[Charlie Poole]

Hi Dave,

I don't think that size is such a big problem... just don't have too many sessions going on in parallel.

The bigger issue is that open space used in a group like this works best with a specific issue to resolve and some outcome to be created. I think you need a theme at the minimum together with some approach to collecting results and arranging to do follow-up.

Charlie

On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:10 PM, Dave Rooney <davero...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dave...

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[Adrian Howard]

Another +1 for Lean Coffee. I used it in almost exactly the situation
you described to good effect.

The one thing I would say is that ten people might be a little large
for a single lean coffee group. Too many people for everybody to get a
chance to contribute. I might try two groups of five at least
initially.

Cheers,

Adrian

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[George Dinwiddie]

Dave,

Openspace works because there are people who have passion for being
there. If they don't, they go someplace else where they do. With a group
that small, how many sessions could be held simultaneously? And if
they've not self-selected on the topic, it would be entirely
appropriate, in openspace, for them to go do something else.

- George

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Consultant and Coach http://www.agilemaryland.org
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[mheusser]

Lean Coffee+1.

Maybe lean coffee followed by splitting into two or at most three
groups based on interest.

--heusser

[Morgan Ahlström]

You could try adding a rotation scheme á la world cafe to the meeting. I did that for a retrospective with ~10 people and three different topics being discussed at three different tables that everyone had a chance to sit by, leaving only a table host to be the collective memory for each topic (the hosts were rotated as well but had to stay an extra seating). 

BR

Morgan

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[J. B. Rainsberger]

I vote for Lean Coffee or World Cafe format. I would emphasise having food and drink and a specific theme. Beyond that, you already know what to do. Get Bridgehead to cater. :)

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