Roundcrisis

In my previous post about Bytesize Architecture sessions I described briefly that one of the key aspects of the session is to have “Alone together” time where each of the participants of the session will have a few minutes where they are working on the same task but not collaborating , and they are in the same room (virtual or not).

The quiet time allows a break to engage on the task at hand and have some time to think (time to think during a meeting is sadly underrated ). Because of it, each participant learns to:

• Realise that sometimes they don’t have the full picture, and come up with concrete areas for further investigation .
• For people new to the team or system, it builds confidence in what they have learned by revising what they know. New people generally bring great questions. The questions some might have anyway but are tired of asking, or afraid to ask.
• For some people with less confidence or experience, they generally realise how much they do know. It also has the effect of building on that experience since, this is a systems thinking exercise, with a very low failure risk.
• Finally, with some iterations, the group can see that they have more or less homogeneous knowledge, and don’t need to always lean on the same people
• It helps people that find it hard to engage on fast interactions ¹

Meetings are generally not very effective, getting all of that in a few minutes is the power of Alone Together