Step 8: Rinse and Repeat

Repeat the ten-minute time slots, each followed by a checkpoint, as shown here, until all squads are fully formed or until you get to a point where people stop moving and you won’t get any additional complete squads. (See When to Stop ) for how you know when to stop and what to do next.)

We don’t recommend extending the time slot. However, it can be a good idea to make it shorter to speed things up if people look distracted, conversations aren’t focused, or things are generally slowing down.

Facilitation

As a facilitator you should resist the urge to solve problems for people or lead them down a particular path. Asking open-ended questions and extending options is useful, but keep in mind that the ultimate squad design must come from the people involved and not you. This is why it’s especially important that managers who aren’t involved in actual hands-on squad work aren’t present. If they’re the type of people who dive in and take over—or even just stand at the back of the room getting frustrated—it will have a negative effect on the choices people make and ultimately endanger self-selection.

You will have to be alert for any sign that people aren’t really self-selecting. At our largest squadification event we had to step in when a team lead started to direct people into squads based on where he thought the gaps were and who would have the most appropriate skills and seniority to fill them.

Sandy remembers:

Our team leads are also parts of squads and do hands-on work. During our largest self-selection someone made us aware that the Business Analyst team lead was directing his people toward particular squads. I think he had good intentions, making sure the “right” person with the “right” skill set would be in the “right” squad. We observed this guy trying to convince people to join a particular squad, and one conversation really bordered on coercion. We interfered with this situation immediately because as facilitators our primary job is to make sure that self-selection really is self-selection and that nobody can say afterward that they were influenced by their manager.

When to Stop?

In our experience you’ll come to a point after three or four rounds where more iterations won’t be helpful. We recommend stopping when you either have all the squads you need—in which case congratulations are in order and you should send everyone home—or, if the problem isn’t solved, engagement levels start dropping. In that case it’s time to switch gears and tackle the outstanding problems by tweaking the format.

David recalls:

One of the things we wondered before Squadification Day was how we would know when to stop. How many squads are enough? On the big day we wanted eleven squads, but we knew five would be a good result. Seven would be even better. So, when should we stop during the day?

We weren’t sure beforehand, but it turned out that the moment to stop was easy to recognize. When people started to chat with each other about the weather, about when the coffee was coming, and about other things that had nothing to do with their squads, we knew it was time to stop and assess where we were.