Facilitation fiesta Ilona Luukko Hi, my name is Ilona. -I Attended facilitation course and as a part of the cource attended to PDP team as a facilitator -I’ll tell my experiences during the course Facilitation fiesta Ilona Luukko

Agenda Kuusi PDP project My observations My role and learning In this presentation I first tell briefly about the Kuusi PDP, the team that I attended as a facilitator. After that I tell my observations about team’s collaboration. Finally, I’ll tell about my experiences of facilitation.

Kuusi PDP First, I introduce the Kuusi PDP team and their project.

the project and the Kuusi pdp Kuusi PDP: 5 members in Finland, 3 remote members from Australia Case company Duoli Goal To build new more ergonomic office chair Change sitting habits of the people So, Kuusi PDP is an eight member team. Five of the members lives here in Finland and three members are Australian remote members. They are working together with Company called Duoli. The goal their project is to build a new more ergonomic office chair and also to renew sitting culture and sitting habits.

Timeline of the kuusi pdp October November December January Ideation Selection of company Prototyping Halfway presentation Getting to know Testing ideas Kuusi PDP has now worked about four months. During those four months they have first selected the company, got to know each others and discussed about the general requirements. They have also created ideas, tested and prototyped them, as well as researched user needs and ergonomics. So lot has happened during the first half of the project. Requirements of the product Schedules Ergonomics Future planning

Observations During the four months I worked with Kuusi PDP, I made some observations about their working and we also made observations together with team during our team dynamics workshop.

Communication can be difficult First observation is, that communication can be really difficult. Communication of Kuusi PDP works quite well, but there is always something to improve. Kuusi PDP themselves find a need to be more active in the communication occurring in the technical channels, such as Slack or Facebook. There was a problem that messages on the Slack were not responded and nobody knew what’s the reaction. So we made a rule, that can be seen there: always to answer ok or press stick after reading. Since the remote students are from Australia, time differences also make on-time communication more difficult, since members in Finland are sleeping when members in Australia are working and vice versa. Difficulties about on-time communication can be seen there while trying to organize Skype meetings.

Finding suitable meeting times can be problematic Other observation is also related to communication, in more detail to face-to-face or Skype communication. During the autumn I noticed, that it can be very difficult to find suitable time for meetings, since people are often busy with their studies and work. That means, that it is sometimes impossible to find a time slot, that everyone could attend. Due to the work and other studies, members sometimes can not be on time in the meetings, but are late. There is one example about the final meeting of the team and facilitator from last week, where there was only three people present at same time, since most of the members were busy with their own schedules. Since remote students are from Australia, scheduling meetings is even more difficult. That means, that meetings have to be held early in the morning or late in the evening, which is maybe not optimal time for anybody.

Roles and responsibilities evolve constantly Third observation is, that roles and responsibilities are evolving constantly. For example, in the Kuusi PDP, at the very beginning, there was one project manager in the team, who handled all the project manager responsibilities. After a couple weeks, they changed roles and after the change there were two project managers and responsibilities were divided for them. Suddenly, on November, other project manager quit the course and the responsibilities of two project manager needed to make taken care by one project manager and other team members.

My role and learning Next, I will tell about my experiences of facilitation. I will tell what I’ve learned and what kind of challenges I had.

My role as a facilitator Arranging workshops Making notes Writing memos As a facilitator, I did a lot of things with PDP group. I arranged and facilitated separate workshops, for example team dynamics workshop. This team dynamics workshop was seen as the most useful facilitator’s activity, according to team members feedback. I also attended most of the team’s weekly meetings. In those meetings, I made notes to summarize team’s discussion, ensured that everybody participates by active listening and asking questions. I also observed teams collaboration and performance and sometimes gave feedback and development ideas for the team. I also got some feedback, that team would have appreciated more feedback from facilitator after meetings, so they could have developed their meetings more. Active listening and asking questions Observing Helping team

The challenges Role of the facilitator Need for facilitation and interventions I also encountered some challenges during the course. For me the most challenging thing was maybe to define the role of facilitator. In the team we had several discussions about roles of the facilitator during October. After these discussions, facilitator role was more clear for me and the team, but still sometimes during the project I felt, that the role could be still more clear. What surprised me, when collecting feedback from the team, was the fact, that team thinks I managed to define the role of the facilitator quite well. Another challenging thing for me was finding the team’s needs for facilitation and interventions. Since I had no experience about longitude facilitation, it was very difficult to notice needs for facilitation. Very often I noticed only afterwards, that team would have needed some kind of intervention or facilitation, but it was too late.

Most important Learnings Facilitation tools Team dynamics I learned a lot during the facilitation course and while acting as a PDP facilitator. These skills will for sure be useful in my future studies and at work. First of all, I get to know several facilitation tools and methods. I also had a chance to organize and plan those interventions, which gave very good practical experience of development interventions. Since this course was longitude facilitation, I also learned a lot about team dynamics and the needs of the team. I learned to identify needs for interventions and facilitation. If I facilitated PDP team again, I would for sure be able to find much more facilitation needs. Interventions

Thank you! Ilona luukko Thank you for your listening If you have some questions, I’m happy to answer them.