I’ve been asked several times about how to conduct remote facilitation of various agile ceremonies.  Remote facilitation used to come up quite frequently when I worked with business analysts trying to perform requirements elicitation, but now-a-days I’m finding a renewed interest in this topic due to distributed agile teams.

Here’s a simple list of things to keep in mind that may just make your sessions easier for you and more valuable for your participants.

Preparing for the Session

1. Ensure you have a clear agenda that allows for ~ 5 minutes of start-up time. Someone will always call in late or have to download the online meeting software, etc.  Note: this doesn’t mean you start 5 minutes late.  You always start on time.
2. Ensure you know how to perform the basic functions of the online meeting software such as:
   • Share applications, files, and/or your desktop
   • See list of participants
   • Read status messages (e.g., speed up, slow down) from participants
   • Post and answer questions
3. Decide which, if any, special features of the online meeting software you will use. Ask participants to be familiar with these features or plan to spend time in the meeting reviewing them.
4. Practice running the session with another participant so they may tell you how the graphics look, how slow the screen redraws, etc. This is especially important if you are sharing graphics or animation, conducting Sprint Reviews, or online training. During the real session you will not want to your participants to miss important information because they are waiting for the screen to re-draw even as you move to a new topic.

A Few Minutes Before the Meeting Begins

1. Open all documents and login to all applications needed for the session so participants do not have to watch you search for files, bookmarks, etc.
2. Login to the online meeting using the presenter URL
3. Dial into the conference call as the leader
4. Share an appropriate document or welcome message so people are confident that they have logged into the proper meeting.
   • Consider turning off email notices, IM, Skype, or other applications that may pop-up during the meeting.

Tips for Large Groups

1. Determine if the conference line limits the number of participants. If so, verify that the number of expected attendees is within the limits. If not, schedule multiple meetings, encourage people to join from conference rooms, etc.
2. Turn off the conference call line’s joining and leaving the call announcement feature.
3. Determine if the online meeting software (Live Meeting, GoTo Meeting, WebEx, etc.) limits the number of participants. If so, verify that the number of expected attendees is within the limits. If not, schedule multiple meetings, encourage people to join from conference rooms, etc.
4. Determine if you will take questions & comments via the phone and/or online meeting tool. If taking questions via the online meeting tool, it is helpful to have someone else monitoring the questions to feed them to the primary facilitator. This way, the primary facilitator can keep presenting the meeting’s content without having everyone view the online questions.

Running the Session

1. Welcome people to the call as they join the conference line.  Note: Once you have started presenting do not interrupt your presentation & flow by welcoming people who have joined late.
2. Set ground rules such as:
   • Ask participants to put their phone on mute if they are not speaking. This will reduce background noise.
   • Explain how to mute and unmute their phone (often *6) if you do not have a mute button
   • Ask participants to not put this call on hold because often their hold music will be heard by everyone and make it difficult for people to hear the discussion.
   • Explain how to submit questions.
   • Ask participants to state their name before speaking (e.g., “This is Bill from Philly…”)
3. If participants do not know each other or if there are many people on the call, ask the questioner to state his name, role, and location (or whatever info would put the question or comment into context).
4. When handling questions, read or repeat the question to ensure you understood the question & to ensure that all participants heard it, too.
5. You may want to take a snapshot of the meeting participants for future reference.
6. If some people are in the room and others are on the phone, do not let people in the room dominate the conversation. Explicitly ask people on the phone for their input and questions. If the line is silent, ask them if they are speaking while the phone is on mute.
7. Near the end of the session, tell people how to logout of the online meeting.

After the Session

1. Follow-up on any action items, etc. just as you would for any other meeting.

Good luck!!!  And remember, “Inspect and Adapt!”