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Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™

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Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills
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Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™

Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills is an interactive course designed to help Scrum practitioners develop a facilitator’s mindset, proficiency in facilitation skills, and learn when and how to select effective techniques for various circumstances. Strong facilitation skills enable better problem-solving, more effective Scrum events and greater team alignment, all leading to better outcomes.

A key tenet of Scrum is to put problem-solving and decision-making in the hands of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Framework creates venues for this to happen and the Scrum Values help create an environment in which each Scrum Team member’s voice can be heard. However, team interactions don’t always go well. Sometimes team members lose sight of goals, don’t fully engage and/or can’t reach agreement. Effective facilitation can guide the team toward their desired outcomes.

Who should attend?   

This course is ideal for:

Scrum Masters and any Scrum Team member interested in learning how to use facilitation to enhance their team’s success; for example, Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Consultants. This course is not suitable for professionals with little Scrum knowledge or experience.

What is the class?   

In this one-day skills-building course, participants will learn how to become better facilitators to improve interactions with their Scrum Teams, stakeholders and customers. They will focus on how to adopt facilitation as a stance and enable the Scrum Values. Students will address a series of common Scrum-related scenarios by applying several facilitation techniques that they can add to their collection of agile practices. They will create and leave with their own facilitation “plan” to improve their next team discussion or Scrum event.

The areas of focus are: 

  • Develop facilitation skills and a facilitator’s mindset 
  • Learn the facilitation principles that experienced facilitators fall back on when interactions are difficult 
  • Understand the roles that facilitation principles and the Scrum Values play in enhancing healthy collaboration in Scrum Teams
  • Explore how facilitation can address challenging scenarios most Scrum Teams encounter
  • Apply facilitation skills and techniques to improve the Scrum events and other interactions
  • Understand how to encourage diverse perspectives, while bringing the team together to reach decisions 
  • Experience the elements of group dynamics and how they influence the decision-making process 
  • Leave class with a toolbox of facilitation techniques and understand how to apply them in different circumstances
What are the benefits of attending a PSFS with Optilearn? 

There are lots of trainers offering the same course. When you book directly with Optilearn (sometimes, we offer our classes via Partner Training Organisations) you will receive the following benefits:  

If you fail your (free) PSFS assessment attempt on the first go, we’ll give you free mentoring, coaching and teaching to help you fill in the gaps before your (free) second attempt.  

Specifically designated time in every class for assessment preparation. Practicing some mock questions and receiving feedback will increase your chances of success.

Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills
Course overview

This class is for those who regularly find themselves facilitating Professional Scrum events. It will cover facilitation techniques to help improve these interactions.

1 day or 2 half days

Virtual or In-person

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Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™ courses

Optilearn's Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills™ course schedule.

Course schedule

Frequent questions

Still have a question

Still have a question? Please get in touch with us and we will be in touch as soon as possible.

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    Frequent questions

  • Full access to the class, an emailed copy of the resources used (for your personal use only), expert training by an accredited trainer and where applicable, free assessment attempts and more. For all classes that are accredited by Scrum.org, you will typically receive a 40% discount to the next level assessment, a thank you package sent to your home address, lifetime certification and also an alumni discount with Optilearn so that all future course bookings receive 10% off.

  • Yes, full attendance is required to be processed as an attendee.

    We accept that life gets in the way sometimes, and emergencies do happen, but we expect all learners to have the days cleared in their calendar. It is at the trainer’s discretion as to whether you have missed too much to be accredited (typically, missing more than an hour is not accepted). In this case, you will not receive a refund or the assessment codes. Don’t worry though, in these cases we will accept you onto a future class at no further cost, but we are not liable for any costs you incur due to this.

  • Absolutely not. When making payment we will request your home address, but you do not have to give it to us (a business address is perfectly acceptable). We simply use this to send a thank you package to the address provided if you have booked a qualifying class.

    You will never receive any marketing to your home address. If you have any concerns over how your data is used, please contact us and we will be happy to assist.

  • For some of our classes we will ask you for your country, or the participant’s country of residence (not the nationality). This is because we try to maintain parity in our pricing based on where the participant will be joining the class from. You may see these options referred to in some material as primary, secondary or tertiary and these are determined by our accrediting body.

    Based on the information found here: https://www.scrum.org/become-professional-scrum-trainer/supporting-world we will select the correct pricing for you after you enter your country. We reserve the right to ask for proof of your residence in order to process a booking.

  • The first thing to do is to contact us. Although we always recommend public classes as a better option due to the diversity of thought and experience available to the learners, we accept that sometimes organisations would like a private experience just for their employees.

    They are available for any class, virtual or in-person – we can even offer delivery in a variety of languages. Typically, it becomes cheaper to arrange a private offering when you exceed seven learners in a single class, but please contact us to explain your requirements so that we can provide a detailed quotation.

  • Depending on the class chosen, it will equate to a minimum of eight hours per day (including lunch). For example, our two-day Professional Scrum Master classes are often scheduled to run between 0830-1630 on two consecutive days. When split across more than two days, class hours will differ but they are made clear at the time of booking.

  • For most classes, we reserve the right to cancel if less than four learners are due to attend. In terms of the maximum, we are able to handle up to twenty for a virtual offering or thirty in-person. Having said this, our average numbers are between six and ten. 

  • As soon as you make payment you will receive a confirmation email (if you don’t receive it, it’s likely your spam filter or an incorrect email address being listed). If you didn’t receive anything, please contact us as soon as possible. Beyond that initial email, all learners will receive instructions seven days in advance of the class start date (again, if you don’t receive anything, please contact us). These details will include joining instructions (for virtual classes) or meeting instructions (for in-person classes) alongside any preparation work required.

  • Sometimes. Depending on the class you are booked onto, we may ask you to read some blogs, watch some videos, or most commonly, read the Scrum Guide (for Professional Scrum classes only). All of this information will be included in your welcome email sent seven days before the class is due to start. If you are someone who likes to get ahead and study, please contact your specific trainer requesting pre-study information and they will be happy to provide you with guidance.

  • There are a lot of variables to take into account for this question, and so we’d recommend taking a look at our Terms and Conditions.

    In short though, if you cancel more than ten days before the start date you will be offered a full refund or the opportunity to move dates at no cost. Cancellations with less than ten days’ notice will provide a 50% refund, but we will still try to accommodate a date move at no cost. In all cases, we reserve the right to deduct any costs (typically payment processing fees or any packages shipped to your address) from your refund.

  • If the class is cancelled or rescheduled due to our trainer’s availability or circumstances broadly within our control, we will provide a full refund or date change at no cost, with no deductions made. Most commonly, cancellation is done due to low numbers of registrations and we do so to ensure the quality you have paid for (which includes interactions with other learners) is delivered.

    We appreciate this can be disappointing and we always aim to keep cancellations to a minimum.

  • They are too numerous and hard to detail. Often, we find that people favour the in-person connections of an in-person class due to the ‘water cooler’ discussions, activities that require physical space and also the opportunity to minimise the distractions of home-working. However, our virtual classes utilise Mural and Zoom as our collaboration tools, and increasingly we are our finding that our learners are choosing the option for remote learning.

    We cover the same material, in much the same ways, but the experiences are simply, different. If you’d like to discuss which option may suit you better, please contact us and we’ll be happy to advise.

  • You can pay via card, bank transfer, PayPal or international bank transfer. All currency payments are made in GBP by default, although we can arrange payment in USD by prior agreement. We can also request payment via invoice although please note that payment must be received at least 48h before the class start date. We are willing to onboard with your organisation’s financial department, but in our experience this requires a significant lead time.

    If none of these payment methods are suitable, please contact us and we will try and work with you to provide an alternative.

  • For virtual classes, if you or your business are resident in the UK then you will incur a 20% VAT charge on your purchase total. If you are external to the UK (inc. the EU) then there will be no VAT due. Full VAT receipts are available upon request. For in-person classes in the UK, VAT is charged to all learners as the delivery is within the zone where VAT is applicable.

  • Yes! Our business is supported by great referrals from our previous learners. To make a referral, please tell the participant to include your name/referral information in the ‘Additional Information’ field of their booking. Once they have made a purchase, we will pay a referral fee of up to 10% of their invoice value.

    Unfortunately, you must refer them before they make the purchase otherwise it will not be considered.

  • For all classes accredited by Scrum.org you are eligible for a specific amount of PDU credits which can be used as proof of your continued professional development. These credits vary based on the class you take, and are given based on class attendance rather than passing the assessment. You can find more information about PDUs and how to claim them here: https://www.scrum.org/support/can-i-claim-pdus-attending-scrumorg-course

  • For each class listing you will see the trainer scheduled to deliver that class. If your question is specific to that class, then please contact them directly. If your question is about an Optilearn process or something more generally, then please contact us as enquiries@optilearn.co.uk and a member of our team will get back to you.

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