Setting your Agile Course with the Sail Boat Futurespective

Are you in the beginning of designing your new agile course? You probably have a new team on board and are yet to figure out how to kick-start the course, so you can start working towards achieving your goals and executing your strategies. If this applies to you, then probably the best way to start any agile course and get a new team really working together is through the sailboat futurespective. So read on to find out more about how this great exercise works in team building and achieving your goal!

What Is the Sail Boat Futurespective?

The Sail Boat Futurespective is a simple technique, with the idea that all the members of the team are on the same sailboat, and are heading towards the same goal and vision that they all have set out to achieve, while being faced with winds and rocks along the way, which help speed them up or slow down their path. It starts off with the team coming together and drawing four things: a sailboat, some rocks and clouds, and a few islands. The boat is at a distance from the islands, and the rocks and under the sea, nearer the islands. The boat is traveling towards these islands, with the rocks under the sea in between them. There is a wind blowing, helping the boat reach the islands. The sailboat has also let down its anchor.

What the Exercise Represents?

Everything drawn up till now represents something unique. The sailboat is the team of course. The island is a symbol of the team’s vision that is to be achieved, the vision that they will day in and day out to work towards. But in between the team and their vision are the rocks, which represent all the risks that the team could face in achieving their goals. The clouds and the wind, both are positive forces that work towards helping and aiding the team to achieve its goals. The boat’s anchor which has been let down represents everything that is slowing down the team during their journey.

Brainstorming about the Sail Boat Picture

Once this entire image is created, stick it up on the wall for everyone to see clearly. Start off by discussing what the team’s goals and visions are. With this clarified, conduct a brainstorming session, where you ask everyone to come up with any ideas they can about any of the symbols in the picture, i.e. write down their ideas about what the rocks (risks) might be and so on.

After this, ask everyone to read out their ideas aloud. Now take some time to discuss with the team how they plan on continuing to practice all the ideas written down in the ‘clouds’ section. This is important because clouds represent positive forces, and ideas related to these positive forces need to be continued throughout the length of the project. Then move on to the discussion of how the team can work to eliminate the risks that have been identified.

The next step is to figure out what is the most major issue that is slowing down the team, and choose to focus on that. Discuss again what steps could be taken to eliminate this issue which is slowing you down. The entire brainstorming session should be 5-7 minutes long, after which every member should be given time to speak their part. After having done all of this, congratulations because the futurespective has now been finished and closed!

What to Expect Out of This Technique?

The Sail Boat Futurespective technique is a simple technique which can be understood by all and produce the best of results. It is basically just a brainstorming session, but a session that is made fun by the use of the interactive picture. You can expect your team to appreciate the technique because of its simplicity. The technique is made fun and gets the job done by allowing the team to come together and discuss the goals and vision to be achieved, what the risks are that need to be tackled and what the advantages they have that could benefit them.

By using the metaphor of the sail boat, I find that teams can visualize all the possible problems better, and better visualization of the problems means more innovative solutions are suggested. All in all, the exercise takes 45 minutes at most. And you can expect to step away after these 45-90 minutes having perfectly made a plan of what all the goals, visions, and risks are. I used to host and be part of these sessions with bunch of amazing colleagues on monthly basis and we called these sessions cocoon encouraging a team of talented strategists, analysts, UX, UI and data to think out of the box. @Pankaj Sharma

When Would You Use This Technique?

Because of the simplicity of the Sail Boat Futurespective method, it can be used normally without the need for a special occasion. Usually, this technique proves to be very fruitful and interesting when a futurespective has to be conducted alongside a number of teams, all at the same time. This technique is highly recommended for tasks in which two or more teams are highly dependent on one another and are facing some common issues and risks. In such a case, conducting a common futurespective can aid all the teams involved because it ensures a maximum outflow of creative ideas on how to tackle the ongoing issues.

Benefits of Using the Sail Boat Futurespective Exercise

Using this technique can also serve to be very beneficial because it promotes feelings of mutual trust and respect between the two teams. This is because the names of both teams are simply put into the Sail Boat drawn in the picture, thus literally symbolizing that we are all in the same boat here, trying to reach the same destination and going through the same hardships. The technique is also a good way of revealing all the good and bad parts of a team, thereby bringing to light all the things that need to be improved even more. The Sail Boat Futurespective exercise is easily applicable to any team and does not require any specifications or levels of maturity.

Alterations to the Sail Boat Futurespective Approach

One alteration in this Sail Boat technique that is very commonly used by most team leaders is to focus only on the winds without bringing in the anchors into the story. This means that when the picture is being drawn, you don’t draw the anchor and forget that it ever existed.

So instead of focusing both on things that help speed you up (the positives) along with all the things that slow you down (the negatives), now the team only focuses on the positives. What this does is that it increases the team morale and spirit, because the team eventually focuses on the good things. This alteration and focusing on the good side also gives all the team members a sense of accomplishment, which is necessary to keep all the members motivated and inspired to give their best.

When these teams have something positive to talk about in the form of these ‘winds’, they then end up realizing that there are a number of things in their project that are already working fine, so they don't have to start all over from scratch, and they are more capable than they give themselves credit for. This approach, which is only a little different from the original Sail Boat exercise, is great for teams who have been facing a lot of difficult situations and needed a motivation boost.

Focusing on the Positives

Another common thing that team leaders do is add the element of sunshine to the exercise, thereby trying to increase the positivity and giving the members something on the good side to focus on. So in the picture being drawn, just as there are the winds and the clouds to focus on, many leaders add the sunshine too. This sunshine represents all that makes the team members happy, all that helps them keep a positive outlook during the project.

This positivity is important in the project because it helps the team members realize that all is not lost in a sense, that they can still overcome all the risks despite how many they may be because at least they have some positives to keep them going. A little positivity of this sort, though it does not directly affect the project, it does affect the team member’s attitudes, productivity, and outlook during the course of it. As the old saying goes, think positive, and things will go right. Most of us may downplay how important this saying actually is. Because in reality, this does make a lot of difference, helping the team members think positively by bringing in the element of sunshine in the picture will also help them produce more creative, out of the box solutions.

At the End of the Sailing Trip

By the end of this sailing trip, we've been on together, I'd like to say that the Sail Boat Futurespective exercise is an amazing way to kick start your agile course or project. This exercise covers all the basics – it ensures that the team feels like they’re in this together, it manages to aid them to set a vision and goals, it helps with the realization of all the potential risks and negative factors to look out for and lastly it brings to light all the positives in the project that should be focused on. The Sail Boat exercise is definitely one that is highly recommended to all teams that are just starting up and need some help in figuring out how to get on the right path that could be good for them.