The Fist of Five is a voting and consensus building technique that allows groups of people to quickly understand what they agree and disagree on. With a foundation built upon the agreements they do have; the group can focus their time and effort on resolving their differences. The simultaneous voting aspect of Fist of Five boosts the effectiveness of the group conversations by giving everyone an equal voice. I.e. the loud extroverts in the group no longer dominate the conversation. It only takes one minute to teach the Fist of Five to a new group of people and considering its broad versatility; it is a collaborative technique well worth learning.
I am sure that you have been in a lengthy team discussion that is wrapped up by the lead saying, “so we all agree then?!”. The team responds with some half nods, some murmuring and plenty of silence. The lead moves on quickly and you are left confused about what we just agreed upon and how much agreement there really was. This to me is a failed attempt and consensus based decision making. The Fist of Five can improve these situations in numerous ways with very little effort expended.
Benefits of the Fist of Five
- Reveals hidden information: Who agrees, who is sitting on the fence, who disagrees, why do they disagree.
- Reduces me vs. them mentality: Participants are disagreeing with a statement not necessarily a person.
- Builds consensus: quickly see where everyone agrees, hone in the areas of disagreement allowing for discussion to resolve these differences.
- Saves time: prevents discussion around topics that are already agreed upon, speeds up the resolution of differences because the specifics of the disagreement are often clearer.
- Provides more time to tackle the key issues: once the disagreements are clear, the group can focus their precious time on that item.
How to use the Fist of Five
- The facilitator makes a statement, such as “The Sprint Backlog should include the seven User Stories that are underlined on the whiteboard” or “The new team name should be ‘High Five’”
- The facilitator counts down from three, holding their fist in the air. (They use that time to visually confirm that all participants are ready to vote, who show their readiness by raising their own fist into the air).
- At the end of the count down, all participants change their fist into their vote, as shown below.
- The votes are ‘read’ which leads to an ‘outcome’ as explained below. The outcomes include: Statement Accepted, Statement Rejected, and More Discussion is needed.
Participant voting
Participants show their agreement or disagreement with the statement by voting as follows:
- 5 fingers: strongly agree / it is spot on / approaching perfect
- 4 fingers: agree / it could be improved but i am happy with it
- 3 fingers: neutral / will go with the majority
- 2 fingers: disagree / the intent needs to be tweaked / the wording needs to change
- 1 fingers: strongly disagree / the intent is wrong / i do not support this
Reading the votes
- Strong agreement: Everyone voted four or five.
- Agreement: The majority voted four or five; there are no twos or ones.
- Strong disagreement: There are only threes and below.
- Disagreement: any other result; such as there are some ones or twos, and some fours or fives.
Outcomes
- If Agreement or Strong Agreement is reached, the statement is accepted; the team has made a decision!
- If there is Strong Disagreement the statement is rejected; the team has made a decision!
- If there is Disagreement then more discussion is needed. One at a time, those that voted two or one explain their point of view to the group, then others in the group join in the conversation. The facilitator guides the discussion before deciding what to do. Usually some changes will be made to the statement followed by a revote.
When to use the Fist of Five
The Fist of Five is surprising versatile; primarily because there are so many different situations where teams need to agree or at least understand what consensus exists within the team. Some situations where I have found the Fist of Five to be highly effective:
- Choosing a team name
- Choosing a name for a project
- Agreeing on a Sprint backlog – which user stories to include
- Deciding on the scope of a project – which scope items to include.
- Agreeing on a Vision statement – which intentions to include and the specific wording of the sentence(s).
- Deciding on the objectives for a community, such as Scrum Master Community of Practice - which objectives to include and the specific wording of each objective.
- Deciding on a set of team values – which values to include and the specific wording of each value.
How to use the Fist of Five on multiple items
Sometimes your team will have brainstormed many competing items. The Fist of Five is still very effective in this situation to either decide on one winner or to select multiple items. The basic usage is the same as described above. The key difference is to vote on each item, and record those votes, before discussing any item in detail. As you vote on each item note down all the votes against the specific item (e.g. Jimmy votes 4, Bob votes 3, Sally votes 5, Dianne votes 2 could be recorded as 4352). This allows the group to assess the overall field of options and quickly rules out some options as well as locking in some clear winners. The team can now look to combine items before focusing their discussion on those items that did not have clear consensus.
Example of choosing a Project Name
What follows is the list of project names we brainstormed along with the Fist of Five votes for the items that did not have Strong Disagreement, and hence were immediately discounted. There were 6 people voting. In this situation we only wanted one name for the project so “Project New Hope” was the winner.
- 323244 ProtoFNX (This item received two votes of 2 fingers, two votes of three fingers and two votes of four fingers)
- Proton and FNX Foundation
- Joint FNX & Proton
- 234334 A new hope
- 332244 FNXP
- Return of the Mortar
- Proton strikes back
- 233323 Proton - A new hope (This result is also Strong Disagreement)
- Galactic War
- Clone Wars
- Death Star
- Project JAM
- JAM Session
- Proton JAM
- 544335 Project New Hope
Most of the company's I have worked in have some kind of flexible working arrangements; ranging from choice over your break times; through to hot-desking with infrastructure that makes working from home almost seamless. So you can imagine my surprise when I joined my latest engagement and everyone takes lunch at the same time! Everyone also starts and finishes at the same time with only a hand full of exceptions. Initially I thought it was weird, even backwards; when close to one hundred people downed tools and headed off for their lunch break. However the many benefits that this provides quickly became apparent and I am now a convert.
To support these fixed times the company has a suitably relaxed approach to staff taking time away from the office when life demands it. i.e. A delivery can only be between 8AM and 12PM; your dog has a bad back and needs to go to the vet, etc. So for the most part everyone is at work during the set hours; however there is enough flexibility to live our lives.
The four primary benefits of fixed Start, Lunch and Finish times are:
- Increased social interaction, building up a sense of community and company.
- More time available for collaboration and face to face work activities.
- Encourages people to rarely do overtime.
- Increased efficiency
Benefits related to increased social interaction
- More random social interactions occur at lunch time.
- Easier to arrange lunch with people outside of your team, because you all have lunch break at the same time.
- Group lunch activities are easier for individuals to plan and attend; hence there more activities run and more regularly. Some of the regular activities include:
- Futsal
- Board games
- Co-op multiplayer (i.e. Rocket League, Fifa )
- Art excursions
Increased collaboration time
The fixed times make for more time available for collaboration in day to day work. i.e. Everyone is available to collaborate from the Start time all of the way through to Finish time. No more having to wait until ‘Core Hours’ to be able to talk to someone in your own team.
Rarely do overtime
With everyone up and leaving at the same time, it sends a clear signal that overtime is not the norm here.
Benefits related to increased efficiency
- Easier scheduling of meetings because you know when everyone is available.
- Team daily cadence aligned.
- Team cadence can be fine-tuned.
- Companywide issues/opportunities can be resolved faster.
- Company half day celebrations are easier to plan, and will not cut into productive time.
Drawbacks to fixed Start, Lunch and Finish times
- Prevents regular commitments outside of those start and finish times. i.e. pick up kids from child care. This can turn away some prospective hires.
- I am sure there are more I just don’t know what they are…
What are your thoughts?
- Have you had similar experiences? I would love to hear about them, especially if they are from different industries.
- Have you had different experiences to this? If so please let know how it was different and what we can learn by contrasting the two experiences?
Photo by: Juhan Sonin
This is one way a work group can improve their interactions and hence become a high performing team. Individuals and Interactions are crucial for a team to have a chance of being a successful agile team. I often see teams that are full of great individuals yet the team is not performing as well as they could be. One common cause of this is that they are all working as individuals and not interacting effectively. These work groups can become great teams by progressing themselves from Co-ordination to Cooperation to Collaboration.
Co-ordination
Dictionary Definition: the organization of the different elements of a complex body or activity so as to enable them to work together effectively.
The working definition I use: Pursuing individual success over team success, by staying well out of each other’s work. i.e. Team members working on separate user stories within the same iteration.
Symptoms at Stand ups:
- Many user stories in progress.
- Reporting their status to the ‘leader’, not the team.
- No interest in user stories that are not their own.
- No concern regarding delivery of user stories that are not their own.
Cooperation
Dictionary Definition: the action or process of working together to the same end.
The working definition I use: Pursuing team success, by working as individuals. i.e. Team members working on separate tasks within the same user story.
Symptoms at Stand ups:
- Few user stories in progress
- Present their information to the team.
- Asking questions about user stories that they are not working on.
- Interest in the delivery of user stories that they are not working on.
- Rushing to select the most interesting tasks for themselves.
- Rarely offering to assist each other.
Collaboration
Dictionary Definition: the action of working with someone to produce something.
The working definition I use: Pursuing team success, by working as one. i.e. Team members working on the same task within a user story. E.g. Test Scenario workshops, design workshops/sessions, pair programming, pair testing.
Symptoms at Stand ups:
- Few user stories in progress
- Present their information to the team.
- Regularly offering to assist each other, especially when a user story is at risk.
- Requesting the team input into selecting the next task that will best help the team achieve its goal.
- Regularly offering to pair with each other, and regular acceptance of those offers.
- Useful discussions often break out. It is sometimes hard to keep the stand up short because there is some much input and interest is effective plans and strategy.
Collaboration improves creativity
Effective collaboration results in something far greater than any contributor could achieve by themselves. Here are some creative collaborations, were I believe the result was superior to the input of any individual: Monty Python, Pink Floyd, The Beatles. They all bounced ideas off each other, helping each other to reach great heights. When separated they were all still great individuals yet failed to reach the dizzying heights they reached when collaborating.
Collaboration improves reviews
It is hard to provide an effective review without in-depth understanding of the work being carried out. That is why it is difficult and sometimes ineffective to review each other’s work when team members are just cooperating with each other. When team members collaborate with each other they are able to review as they progress, and/or review the work with deep understanding that results in superior feedback and hence a superior result.
Collaboration improves planning
Planning is only as good as the input it receives. When team members are collaborating they are more invested in the work, and hence more motivated to provide input. Additionally they are more motivation to ask the tough questions at stand ups, that help teams deliver when the going gets tough.
Summary
Team members should aim to always be Cooperating and often be collaborating.
In summary it should be focused on what you hear not on what you say.
We recognised that communication with staff during an agile transition was important for two reasons; firstly so that the transition changes would be understood and accepted. Secondly and most importantly, so that issues and concerns from staff would be raised. We could only address concerns that we knew about so it was crucial that they were raised by the people who were feeling the impact of the changes.
Try as we might, deafening silence was the result of most of our communication approaches.
While this blog post presents many communication approaches that failed to generate any feedback, overall the transition was a big success, with the results to prove it. The net positive survey response to ‘I am well informed about the agile transition’ rose from 70% to 84% and then to 90% over two years. However the ultimate indicator of success is that the vast majority of staff are really happy at work.
What I have taken away from all of this, is that communication should come from numerous channels and MUST be two way to be effective. It also brings to mind the Proverb "Listen to people twice as much as you speak."
For those who are interested, the remainder of this blog explains the different approaches that we tried and a brief summary of the outcomes.
- Email feedback inbox – e-mails received in two years, zero.
- End of Transition Team sprint Email, explaining what we had done and are planning on doing. In there we linked to the feedback email address and mentioned that all of the Transition Team is open to being approached – feedback received, zero.
- Chocolates hidden behind links in the End of Transition Team email - we ended up eating the chocolates ourselves as no one found them.
- Directly telling people about chocolates hidden behind links – partial success, with some heavy hints, the chocolates were ‘found’ and handed out, excitement and interest created = zero.
- End of sprint Blog, explaining what we had done and are planning on doing - very few people subscribed to the blog.
- Transition Team members provided in person updates to teams after their stand ups – partial success, teams got the information and queried a few items; however where generally dis-interested and questioned why they get Management updates and Transition Team updates.
- Submit news to go in Management Update – un-tested by this time the Transition was wrapping up and only one news item was submitted, ‘the disbanding of the Transition Team’.
- Quarterly Staff speak ups – this generated a couple of questions but generally there was silence, at least they were there to hear the messages.
- Ask Transition team for concerns, who in turn asked Scrum Masters, who in turn asked team members – success, a reasonable number of concerns were raised. Many of these were turned into Transition Team User Stories.
- Surveys – ten questions one page, done via Survey Monkey, same survey three times over two years. Success: 80% of staff responded, plenty of meaningful and detailed feedback received. Many of these were turned into Transition Team User Stories.
- Rick Roll entire division in Transition Team farewell e-mail – good result, at least five people contacted me ;-)
- Scrum Masters discussing issues with their manager during regular 1 on 1s – success, plenty of issues where raised and then discussed by the Transition Team with several of these becoming Transition Team users stories and some guidance for stories already in progress or about to start.
- Division Manager holding Staff Forums with small cross functional cross team groups – a great success, staff really got stuck into providing direct and honest feedback. Some of this was related to the transition and other items were more general. This provided some Transition Team user stories and some guidance for stories already in progress or about to start.
