This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Mark Stapper
Workshop that will allow participants of all levels to experience Scrum by drawing with a large group.
Details
- Goal: Teach foundational Scrum at scale
- Duration: 20-90 minutes
- Number of Participants: 8-50
- Space arrangement: small groups of 4-6 people (preferably with chairs and tables, but anything that will allow participants to draw on stickies will work)
- Materials needed:
- (Colored) Stickies - to draw on
- (Colored) Markers - to draw with
- Multiple sheets of large paper (Brown paper, flip over etc.) - to collect everyone's work every round
- Masking tape - to stick the large paper to the wall
Steps
These steps are written to be "pick-up and play" friendly, regardless of skill level of both participants and facilitator. If you follow this guide to the letter, you will need one hour to get through the whole thing. You can also use this for inspiration, and adapt it to your audience (Children will need different instructions than IT Professionals).
In the session I did with 26 children aged 5-7, we were able to do round 1-3 in 15 minutes.
Preparation
- Hang a large paper on the wall
- Optional: Distribute drawing materials
!!! Note
If you have multi-color drawing materials, you can enhance the learning experience by creating scarcity of colors.
Placing all materials in a central place will enable participants to pratice intra-group communication.
Placing one color on each table will enable participants to practice inter-group communication.
Round 1: Challenge - Making a beautiful drawing
In this round participants are invited to experience a common challenge together: working together effectively in large groups.
- Have participants form small groups.
- Explain that we will be creating a beautiful drawing together on the one large piece of paper. Make sure you're extra vague on the intended result, and how we expect to get there.
- Invite participants to each take a marker and contribute to the drawing. Some participants may need some encouragement, and some may skip in this round. That is to be expected and perfectly OK. Try to encourage participants to contribute, but accept their trepidation.
- After about 1 minute, instruct participants to stop drawing, and return to their groups. It's important that participants have enough time to experience the challenge, but not nearly enough to actually contribute. You'll know it's time to stop when participants are getting a bit frustrated.
- Debrief: Lightheartedly ask participants if they think the end-result is "beautiful". Next ask what the experience was like for them and what behavior they observed.
!!! Note
Use a Liberating Structure like 1-2-4-all if you have a very diverse audience.
Round 2: Concept - Goal, Rules and Steps
In this round we'll introduce the concepts of common goals, minimal rules, and progressing towards your goals in small steps.
- Put up a new piece of large paper. We'll be using this one paper for the rest of the workshop.
- After inspecting the result of Round 1, it's time to introduce three requirements of working together
- A Common Goal - What is it we're all trying to achieve together, how will we know we've reached it? Use examples of outcome driven goals rather than output driver goals (i.e. "Make a drawing to remember a beautiful sunset on the beach" rather than "Draw the beach, the sea, and the sun setting above it.")
- A Minimal set of rules - What rules do we NEED to be able to progress towards that goal.
- A single step toward that goal - the smallest possible step we could take in achieving the common goal. Challenge participants to come up with outcome driver intermediate goals. (i.e. "A beach that reminds me of a bounty island" rather than "white sandy beach with palm trees").
- Defining the common goal for the workshop:
- Find a person to be the beneficiary (teacher, manager, sponsor etc.). Make it clear to everyone that during this workshop, the beneficiary is an external customer commissioning work from their own money.
- Interview your beneficiary about what they think is beautiful.
- Have the participants ask clarifying questions. Limit this to 3-5 questions.
- Write down some keywords on stickies or on the poster.
- Creating a minimal set of rules (3 max)
- Set one rule: Only the large paper will de judged by the beneficiary, and the beneficiary only. (See note below)
- Ask participants to come up with 3 simple rules that will help them create a drawing with their group. Collect one per group. The minimal outcome should be to draw on stickies, and put them on the canvas when done. Depending on the level of the group you can ask some leading questions like:
- What can we do to involve everyone given the limited canvas size?
- How will we decide on things like what color stickies to use?
- When and how will we place stickies on the large paper?
- If we were to agree on one thing, what would it be?
- Crafting the first step together: Ask the beneficiary to describe what they might like to see after another 1 minute of drawing. (Intermediate Goal)
!!! note
Keep this round as short and on-point as possible. The minimal result is a common goal and one improvement idea that can be validated in the next round. Participants will be tempted to have lenghty discussions about possible solutions and how they will work. The point is that we won't know untill we try, so start experimenting!
Round 3: Exercise - Reaching your goal, finding out how along the way
In this round participants are invited to identify a step towards their common goal, and attempt to reach it within 1 minute.
Then we'll reflect on progress towards our common goal, and the way we're operating to achieve it.
This round can be repeated as many times as you have time for. Try to keep rounds short and snappy, so you can really practice the iterative nature of the experiment loop.
Participants will practice:
- Setting (intermediate) goals
- Working together in a timebox
- Reflecting on progress towards goals and adapting subsequent goals and work agreements iteratively
- Ask every group to contribute to the goal as best they can within the time limit of 1 minute.
- Remind participants of the timebox, and playfully create a sense of urgency for delivery (like it's a fun game-show, but with awesome learning sprinkled on top).
- When the timebox expires, invite participants to present why they believe they made a step towards the intermediate goal. Ask the beneficiary for specific feedback on the drawing regarding the common goal. You can ask questions like:
- Is this what you had envisioned?
- What's the one thing that delights you, and why?
- What could you do without, and why?
- Invite participants to ask questions and come up with concrete next steps.
- Ask participants to share their experience compared to round 2. You can use questions like:
- What changed by having a clear goal?
- Which rule did you find most helpful?
-
In their groups, ask participants to formulate 2 ways to improve collaboration:
- for intergroup collaboration
- for intra-group collaboration
!!! note
Timebox this to about 2 minutes, making it shorter if possible/needed depending on individual group size and as you progress through rounds.
-
Invite groups to present their intergroup ideas. For every idea ask two questions:
- Does anybody else recognize this?
- How can we make this actionable?
Have participants pick one intergroup improvement idea to put into practice for the next round. Use (dot) voting if you have a large group.
Ask participants agree to one intra-group improvement idea to put into practice for the next round amongst themselves.
Repeat as many times as you have time for.
!!! note
If you have time, you can deepen the learning experience by practicing creative destruction: Removing goals and/or agreements when they don't work out. Even in this constructed and safe environment this is an advanced topic that requires some finesse to navigate. You can use Liberating Structures like TRIZ to keep the conversation focused and constructive.
Round 4: Connect - How do you make a beautiful drawing?
In this round we'll guide participants through connecting their takeaways to the original challenge: working together effectively. With a focus on making them actionable.
- Hang the final result next to the original from round 1
- Hang a fresh large paper next to the drawings. Divide it into two sections: "Group" and "Individual".
- Invite participants to reflect on where we started, and how for we've come in a relatively short time. Use a Liberating Structure like 1-2-4-all for large groups. Collect take aways while collectively looking for patterns. Write them down so you can put them on the "Group" section.
- Ask participants to write down one thing they have learned today, and how they will start to apply it tomorrow. Invite participants to share them, use a Liberating Structure like 1-2-4-all or [Impromptu Networking] in large groups.
- Invite participants to write their name on their action item, and post it on the "Individual" section.
- Thank everyone for their participation and close by gifting the large papers to the beneficiary.
!!! note
You can have people take a picture of their action item, and set is as their phone background so they'll be reminded tomorrow 😃.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Mark Stapper
Mark Stapper | Sciencx (2025-08-15T08:00:00+00:00) Workshop: One Minute Art. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/15/workshop-one-minute-art/
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