A Guide To Inspect The Results And Identify Improvements With Columinity
Learn to make sense of the results with your teams and translate insights into action.
Based on the latest scientific research, Columinity (formerly Scrum Team Survey) is a pioneering tool to help teams improve where it matters most. It’s your evidence-based companion for continuous improvement. It highlights performance patterns on multiple levels and illuminates how to move forward.
We defined five steps to get the most out of Columinity:
We strongly recommend all users to follow these steps. They prove to increase the chances of successful usage of the tool drastically.
This article describes step #4: a simple workshop template teams can use to inspect the results and identify improvements. The purpose is to make single teams familiar with how to read the team report and to explore what it means for the state of their team.
Once a team understands the flow of diagnoses, inspection, and adaptation works on the individual team level, it becomes easier to repeat this workshop with multiple teams.
To keep your follow-up workshops fresh & fun, we’ve included three alternative opening exercises: Drawing Together, Appreciative Interviews, and Spiral Journal.
How To Prepare
The invitations and steps are aimed at a single team using the tool. It’s okay if a team already wants to include the perspectives of their stakeholders and supporters (managers, leaders, coaches).
Material:
- Prepare slides or an online whiteboard to collect your insights.
- Have (digital) copies of the team report ready.
- Bring a copy of the poster with the factors that influence Agile team effectiveness.
- Bring a poster with the 10 principles of Columinity.
- Optional: Get a card deck with 100+ Quick Tips to improve your team.
Step 1: Getting Started With 10x10 Writing
10–20 minutes in total
Before you invite the team to inspect the results, setting the stage with a simple warming-up exercise is recommended. The unofficial Liberating Structure 10x10 Writing is a great way to loosen people up and start their thinking. It also creates a first opportunity to connect with others. Some questions may trigger participants already to include insights from the survey results. It’s okay if this happens; it also smoother the follow-up conversations. Just make sure to keep the conversations short at this point. Always feel free to remove, change, or add other sentences. It’s okay to use only a small number of sentences and make it, e.g., 5x5 writing.
Potential Invitations
What first inspired me in this work is…
Something we must learn to live with is…
An uncertainty we must creatively adapt to is…
What I find challenging in our current situation is…
Before we make our next move, we cannot neglect to…
Something we should stop doing is…
A big opportunity I see for us is…
If we do nothing, the worst thing that can happen to us is…
A courageous conversation we are not having is…
An action or practice helping us move forward is…
Step 2: Explore The Results Individually
10–20 minutes in total
The first step is to give everyone time to look through the results, so they have everything fresh in their mind. We do this in silence and individually to avoid social pressure and biases.
- Share a link to the “Team Report” with your team. You can find it under “Invite”. This report is similar to your personal report but doesn’t show your personal results (in blue). Alternatively, you can print the results or share screenshots.
- (Give everyone time to explore the results under “Report” and “Insights.” Encourage people to take notes. Also, emphasize the need for silent reflection to avoid strong opinions from dominating the conversation later on.
Step 3: Identify Patterns Together
20–30 minutes in total
Now that everyone has had the opportunity to inspect the results, we will debrief with the Liberating Structure “1–2–4-ALL”.
Invitation
“What patterns did you observe in your team, and how do you think they contribute to or limit the effectiveness as a team?”
Steps
- First, individually and silently, ask people to write down the biggest patterns they observe.
- Ask everyone to pair up with another person and exchange what they noticed. If you’re doing this virtually, move people into breakouts.
- If you have at least 8 participants, invite each pair to pair up with another pair into groups of 4. If you have fewer than 8 participants, ask people to form a new pair with someone else. In this round, ask everyone to build on the patterns they discussed in the previous round.
- Now, together with everyone, invite all groups to share the most impactful patterns they have observed. You can capture them on a flip, whiteboard, or an online workspace.
Step 4: Decide On Actionable Next Steps
10–20 minutes in total
Now that you’ve made sense of the data and identified starting points for where to improve, now is an excellent time to crystallize those ideas. The Liberating Structure 15% Solutions is super helpful for this. To make the activities small, tangible, and actionable, you can draw inspiration from the deck of Quick Tips.
Invitation
“Identify one concrete action you can take personally to help your team invest in one of the identified impactful patterns. What is something you can improve or contribute without approval from someone else or resources you don’t have access to?”
Steps
- Invite everyone to reflect on the impactful patterns from the previous round and identify one action they can take to contribute or improve it.
- Invite people into small groups (2–3) to briefly share their ideas and give and get help.
- Debrief with the entire group and allow everyone to share the actions they will take. You can collect them under “Actions”.
We highly recommend adding an action to retake the questionnaire a few months later. You can set a “Reminder” in the Team Report directly if you want us to remind you.
Alternative Opening Exercises
Continuous improvement means you have to do it more than once. So, retake the questionnaire a few months later. Most teams prefer a cadence of once every quarter. But you can do it more often or less often. It helps to use different formats for your improvement workshops frequently. Here are three ideas for other opening exercises.
Start With “Appreciative Interviews”
We’ve found that it works best if you build personal connections from what people are proud of or have warm memories about. The Liberating Structure Appreciative Interviews is a great way to do this. As part of this workshop, it’s used as a getting-started exercise. In addition, sharing successful moments sets a positive tone and reminds people of what is possible.
Potential invitation
Round 1: In pairs, share a successful moment you experienced in this team or the wider organization since you started with the tool. What happened? What did the team do or didn’t do? What made the success possible?
Round 2: So what is a success factor that proved to be important in the past, that could be improved in the present?
Start With “Spiral Journal”
Spiral Journal is an “unofficial” Liberating Structure. It offers an excellent opportunity to help people reflect on what’s being learned. In this workshop, we used it to encourage the Scrum team(s), stakeholders, and supporters to reflect on their progress since the previous improvement session.
Ask people to draw a spiral to help them calm down and focus. Do it slowly and precisely. Next, present four prompts for everyone to complete. After each prompt, pause to give them time to write down their answer in the specified quadrant.
Potential invitations
“Something I noticed since the previous improvement workshop was….”
“Something new I have learned is ….”
“A question that is emerging is ….”
“A bold thing I should do is ….”
Invite everyone to share what they wrote down if they want to.
Start With “Drawing Together”
Drawing Together is a Liberating Structure that is about creativity and interpretation. It exists to reveal insights and paths forward through nonverbal expression. This workshop helps the group tap into a completely different way of thinking and make personal connections.
Potential invitation
“Draw the story of your journey leading up to this point. What challenges and surprises have you faced (optionally, add: “since the previous improvement workshop”)? What helped you on your way?”
Closing words: what’s keeping you?
From experience, we know how hard it can be to drive continuous improvement in your team. There are often a thousand things to improve, but what will be most impactful? We are building Columinity to make this easier for you and your team. It’s free for individual teams. So give it a try and expand from there!
