Delegation Poker and Boards - A guide to foster faster decision Making

The Introduction

It is rightly said that:

Relatively often, we come across conditions where no clear responsibilities are defined between two entities, such as a manager and a team, between two teams, or even with managers themselves, isn't it? They kind of?figure it?out?when a situation transpires and elect to avoid general obligations. This can lead to muddles and misunderstandings, which in turn lead to frustration and finally to an ineffective and inefficient organization.

On the other hand, managers often do not want to hand over responsibility. Often because they see delegation as a binary decision –?either I decide, or You decide. They might fear that delegating decisions will make them powerless. This does not have to be the case. You can outline transitional stages of delegation. Based on the different leadership styles from Situational Leadership Theory (Directing, Coaching, Supporting, Delegating), One well-proven succeeding way is by getting decision-making processes transparent and sustainably promote self-organization.

These shades of delegation help managers to gradually transfer responsibility to a team. This way the manager can learn to trust a team, and the team learns to deal with the additional responsibility. The manager assigns more power to the team without totally relinquishing his involvement. It is a major step towards self-organizing teams.

Self-organized work is a vital component of agile leadership. It is grounded on the principle of delegation, according to which proficiencies and responsibility are shifted to employees. Delegation Poker is a practice for teams that playfully thematize this delegation to derive rules of action for working together and making decisions.

Why should you read this article?

• Do you want to simply know what is Delegation Poker practice from Management 3.0?
• Are you planning to experiment with Delegation Poker with your team but wondering how to capitalize your energy in a step-by-step pattern?
• Are you keen to explorer how to introduce transparency in decision-making processes?
• How to interpret data points/trends coming out post-implementation of this practice and use it towards the decision-making process the most engaging one?
• Do you want to know how to strengthen the responsibility of the team which not only calls for more decision-making authority but also learns to take on responsibility?
• Do you want to explore/know my experience and learnings while experimenting with Delegation Poker at scale?
• How does this practice add value at different levels (In my case, Team & Program (Agile Release Train (ART)) level)?
• Lastly, Do you want to know how to scale and sustain this practice?

If your answer is “Yes” for any of the above-mentioned questions, then this article may be of your help.

What is Delegation Poker?

Delegation Poker is a tool from Management 3.0 that helps teams agree on how decisions will be made. Using a process similar to Planning Poker. It allows us to agree with our collaborators on both their expectations about who should make this decision, as well as on the level of delegation. As in Planning Poker, we will also use cards, numbered from 1 to 7, where corresponding to a delegation level.

These seven levels are broken down as follows, with each team member revealing their own perception of the Key Decision Areas as follows:

1. Tell: You as the Manager make the decision
2. Sell: You make the decision, but you try to persuade others to buy into it
3. Consult: You get input from the team before still making the decision
4. Agree: You make a decision together as a team
5. Advice: Your team makes the decision, but you try to influence it
6. Inquire: Your team makes the decision and then tells you about it
7. Delegate: You offer no influence and let the teamwork it out

First, the scenario is presented about a decision that will have to be made.?Then, each person thinks about what level of the delegation this decision should have. Perhaps someone prefers that the decision is made by the Manager, but they would like to be informed of the reasoning used (Level 2). Maybe someone thinks they are qualified to make the decision, but the Manager should be informed of the decision after it is made (Level 6). When everyone has thought about which level they think is best, everyone shows their chosen card at the same time. There will surely be disparity and there will be different expectations. Using the “Poker” approach, we have all made them visible. Together, everyone reaches a decision about the most appropriate level of delegation for the given scenario. And we move on to the next. The entire team is able to get a joint understanding of who should make the decisions in each scenario. The higher level (5-7) decisions they choose, the more they will be delegated.

If I map it with an analogy - It’s a bit like when parents give their children more responsibility, e.g. first they bring their child to school, later they allow their child to walk to school with friends, and later they let their child decide how to get to school by themselves. In this journey, the parents learn to trust their child and hence can focus on other tasks. The child itself gains more self-esteem, freedom, and independence. It is beneficial for both sides.

Why did I decide to use this practice?

As an Agile Consultant & Coach, it has been now 4+ years since I am experimenting with various Management 3.0 practices. This experimentation was carried out with one of my Scaled Agile Transformation Consulting assignment with one of the UK-based Telecommunication clients in the recent past for their two different Agile Release Trains (ART) consisting of ~180 individuals, ~19 teams in 100% remote mode.?I was onboarded as a Program Coach. By the time I was onboarded the client was already practicing SAFe (Scaled Agile). One Agile Release Train (ART) was up and running and wanted to launch another ART.

Since my engagement started in Q3 2019. and we consumed ~7-9 Months to mature the very initial ART. To begin with, I experimented with ‘Celebration Grid’ for the first ART (which was already running while I joined as the client wanted to mature respective ART before launching another) in Remote and in-person setup. ?The respective article can be found at:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/celebration-grid-tool-nurture-creativity-innovation-teams-joshi/

As planned, 2nd ART launched in Q2 2020 that is where I started leveraging Delegation poker. I had the following situation to address before ART launch which encouraged me to leverage delegation poker:

Scenario:

During my initial discussion with the program leadership team, they exclusively mentioned one of their pivotal challenge from the SAFe (Scaled Agile) implementation role standpoint is - they wanted their existing Project managers to re-launch themselves as RTE (Release Train Engineer) for additional ARTs (Agile Release Trains) instead of hiring anyone from outside (of course with proper training, coaching and mentoring) which is fair ask nevertheless, those managers were slightly reluctant to re-launch.?Long story short, when I had a dialogue with these managers, I encountered that they were ready to get themselves up-skilled and relaunched however, were not definite how they could inject additional RTE responsibilities as according to them they were fully occupied from a workload standpoint.

Now, the solution was to create a space in their existing workload that could in turn facilitate to upskill and in turn take up a new role with required mentoring, coaching. ?And in order to create a space, they were required to start delegating their existing responsibilities to teams.?That’s where I decided to experiment with Delegation Poker from Management 3.0 as the preferred choice.

At this point, “Delegation Poker” offers an opportunity to deal with this situation especially the various levels of delegation of decisions playfully; and sustainably promote self-organization within the team. Given the above pointers, I strongly recommend and have learned that it is better to distribute control among the team.

How did I implement this practice?

Getting started is the toughest part. Some of the most common questions I usually receive are: How do we start to delegate??What expectations do our collaborators have about the decisions that we should make and those that they would prefer to do??When are they sufficiently prepared for us to delegate to them? Etc.?

Implementation roadmap:

Step 1: Preliminary preparation:

• As we all were working from home 100% due to pandemics; a Remote workshop was the choice. I prepared an Excel sheet with the cards and copied respective excel in MS Team’s channel for remote/virtual workshop?
• And collected topics (key decision areas) where (the levels of) responsibility is not clear in advance/or requires fine-tuning and invite respective participants
• In my case, I sent the list of Key decision areas/topics which I gathered from the previous points to concerned parties in advance/ before the workshops to have a common agreement on topics/Key decision areas.

Step 2: Kick-off

• Firstly, I explained what Management 3.0 is.
• This is followed by explaining the various delegation levels and what those delegations means.
• Set the stage by highlighting the purpose and expected outcome of the exercise.
• Lastly, explained the following three-step process of execution:

First step:

• Defined a list of work items with the teams, the discussion during this step is extremely important for the process's success.
• For each item team asked themselves how critical is it for the Agile Release Train/Program?
• In my case, the objective was to focus on moderate and high critical areas first.
• Zero down all those items along with explanation and respective significance for the Agile Release Train (ART)/Program.

Second step:

Then?for each item from the list, define the suited level of delegation by playing delegation poker.

• Every team member got one set of cards.
• As a facilitator, I picked a situation to read aloud along with a respective description.
• Each team member (player) selected one of the seven delegation cards privately, reflecting on how the player would delegate the decision in that situation.
• Once all players have decided, they can then reveal their selected cards.
• Let the people with the highest and the lowest cards explain the reasoning behind their choices.
• If there is no consensus reached, then ask for a revote to reach a consensus.
• Once we all reached a conclusion; updated the delegation board with the outcome of the result.
• Repeated the step for all the decision areas.

Third step:

• Once all decision areas were completed, we prepared the wallpapers of the delegation board which we internally called as ‘Enablement Matrix’, and uploaded them into the team’s MS Team channel. We agreed to make the outcome openly referenceable on ART’s MS Team’s channel as well.

Phase 2 – Review/Follow-up

To relentlessly inspect and adapt our newly introduced practice, I set up a follow-up review of the enablement matrix in every Program Increment (PI) I&A event (10-12 Weeks – Program Increment cadence) - Retrospective event:

I started by asking the below questions:

a.??????How do they feel about it?

b.??????Is it useful?

c.??????Are they getting any value out of it?

Etc.

Being coach, I facilitated an Agile Release Train (ART) to analyze and compare the result from the previous outcomes to check for any significant changes for example the changes in delegation levels, if yes then we analyzed by using 1-2-4 all facilitation techniques from liberating structures along with 5 whys to conclude why this change of delegation-level required and what we learned in last 3 months(~10-12 weeks Program Increment duration), etc. and accordingly updated an enablement matrix for next Program Increment cadence.

It was an astonishing time, I was challenged by teams and leadership in many topics during the session which made me took me out of my comfort zone and think deeper about their questions and concerns, tried to help them, and guided them to take the right or more healthy decision for their teams but always with their thinking as first choice and reference. I learned there are many black boxes inside a team about the decision making, about what they can decide by themselves, which ones they need to ask the technical leader, and others that maybe require an agreement between both parts. The 7 delegation layers proposed by this dynamic are wonderful to allow the team members to open their minds and decide a clear delegation matrix for the team. It′s is by far one of the most complex Management 3.0 dynamics I have facilitated until now but at the same time one of the most powerful ones, I really loved it and I think, with a proper follow-up and supporting the team, the benefits from this kind of space are amazing. It′s not the first time it happens to me, if you guys want me to bring some advice to you, try to reserve as much time as possible for this space. My planned time was 1 hour, finally, I needed to use a 1-hour session plus another one for 1 hour and a half, so please keep it in mind.??

Next/Continuous Step:

We don't claim that we have reached our 'North Star', however, getting there slowly and steadily. Firstly, delegation poker was implemented to help people to re-launch; later we introduced the same practice at the Program level too. As a result, decentralized decision-making was expediated. This process is now significantly mature (After all most 1.5 yrs of experimenting relentlessly), and we are keeping this updated basis on I&A input and continuous journey towards self-organization.

My experience as a facilitator

This exercise is indeed very important to ensure that teams feel empowered. I learned a lot from this practice and just to summarize below are the details:

• It is imperative that everyone engaged understands the delegation model and the different delegation levels and be committed to them.
• Delegation Poker and Delegation Boards are most effective when executed in a group that includes people in various roles and with different responsibilities.
• The delegation poker gives you also an opportunity to detect two common fears:

1. The fear of loss of control.
2. The fear of responsibility.

• ?A great tool to exercise Scrum Values:

1.??????TRUST

• As leadership loosening the control or improves the trust between team and manager.

2.??????FOCUS

• Great power comes with great responsibility so once the team feels empowered, they focus more on key areas.

3.??????OPENNESS

• This exercise helps teams to open maybe not on the first time but at the later stage when they have a little bit of experience with the exercise.

4.??????COURAGE

• Improves courage as the team takes a bold decision

5.??????COMMITMENT

• The team feels empowered thus improves commitment.
• It is necessary that the managers/leadership/concerned parties take part in the game round, which is supposed to give up decision-making powers.?Without appropriate participation, it would at best be an exercise that should also end in consensus, but only form the basis for future discussion rounds.
• I highly acclaim making yourself aware of the capabilities and motivation of the team members in advance. When delegating more authority, help them to develop their strengths. Similarly, offer support or ensure support from other team members to accomplish the tasks.
• Delegation and empowerment are not possible without a safe and trusting environment —?psychological safety is required?— It’s important to define the competency level needed to do the job and grow people accordingly. Thereby, Encourage open communication. Team members should feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions. All team members should speak and participate equally.
• I suggest going incrementally while implementing delegation levels. As delegation levels and important decision context are dynamic in nature; may change over time. It is not fixed or black or white. The levels you choose also depend on how each person in your team is used to take over responsibility. When you are on level 1, and you would like to have a self-organized team, you cannot immediately go to level 7. People who are used to do what they are told to have to learn step-by-step to take over responsibility, be accountable, and decide for themselves. That’s why you should also change your decision-making process slightly in small steps in a controlled way and not in an overnight change.
• I conveyed to concerned stakeholders that we must understand that delegation of authority should be an investment. It may take a while to get a return on investment. In the interim, inexperienced team members will cost you time, energy, money, and possibly some blocking.
• Make sure that the team members have all the needed resources and access to all vital information to finish tasks.
• Clear guidelines for making decisions allow self-organized work and can give each employee the freedom they need. It is important to think of the derived guidelines as dynamic, Which are open to further adjustments. Thereby increases transparency, team collaboration & bonding, self-awareness.
• This practice allowed us to create an empowered, skilled team, in an environment where people improved the effectiveness of the system and became more agile in decision making.
• Last but not the least, I would like to exclusively call out that - It may be possible that delegation poker does not work for the first time that’s perfectly ok, keep patience and try again.

My Learnings:

• To be effective delegation needs direction & boundaries. To do that people, managers and all the organization must have an aligned vision, values, and goals. Start with why!
• Eventually, respective leaders were able to manage their time effectively; in turn, were able to focus on RTE activities.
• The way from 1 to 7 is long.?The tasks of the moderator therefore not only include the actual moderation, but also the mediation between the participants.?If a manager always chooses 1 and would like to make all future decisions independently and without consultation, it will be difficult to develop the organization in the direction of self-organization.?If team members continuously select 7 in order to make all decisions themselves from now on, it will also be difficult.?The aim is to empower?the team?to organize themselves and take responsibility through various levels of delegation.?This goal must be clear to all participants and it is also important to want to achieve this goal together.
• As there are so many decision-making situations, participants should focus on those that are unclear or have caused problems in the recent past.?If necessary, it is also advisable to group similar scenarios.
• It is advisable to have a facilitator accompany the game.?Such a facilitator could, for example, be an agile coach/Release Train Engineer or a Scrum Master?S/He should explain the rules, pay attention to the timebox and, if necessary, mediate between the participants.
• Management 3.0 recommends repeating individual game rounds until a consensus is reached between all players.?Nevertheless, if the participants do not agree, this can quickly break the timebox or the time frame in practice.?Postponing it to a later round or organizing a more comprehensive discussion are sensible alternatives.
• The facilitator must pay attention to a relatively balanced proportion of speech among the participants.
• The more specific a delegation poker story is, the easier it is to discuss it.?The trick is to formulate them in such a way that the framework conditions are clear and any preconditions and postconditions are known.

Conclusion:

Is your team ready for?self-organization? Delegation Poker is a way for you and your team to implement the?Seven Levels of Delegation. Together, you not only decide who does what but to what extent does the?decision-making power?lie with each teammate, dependent upon the task or project.?This surprisingly fun game is a great way to increase?employee empowerment.?

I believe that Empowerment and self-organization are key to success in today’s VUCA world therefore the Management 3.0 exercise delegation poker is a great tool to go next step to make your team feel empowered and self-organized. I passionately recommend & persuade you and your team to give it a try.?It’s worth it.?

If you want to explore/learn more about Delegation poker, you can look at Management 3.0 page at https://management30.com/practice/delegation-poker/

DISCLAIMER:

• The article is prepared & compiled basis on my personal Management 3.0 practice implementation experience/view-only; you may have your own version too.
• As project delegation poker implementation images are classified; have not been shared/published with this article.
• ?Images are from Management 3.0 website

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