Delegation Poker Figure 1: Delegation Poker. Delegation Poker (by Jurgen Appelo) helps people and teams to agree on a level of delegation for key decision areas (Figure 1). Most importantly, while defining these levels of delegation, the participants have a discussion. This, in turn, fosters mutual understanding and empathy. Delegation is not easy. Managers often fear a loss of control when considering to allow teams to self-organize, and creative networkers sometimes don't know how to self-organize. A delegation board enables management to clarify delegation and to foster empowerment for both management and workers.
Use Delegation Poker to clarify who's responsible for what and to what level. This is a method where you can encourage employee engagement through controlled self-organization and clarified value and decision-making.
The objective of Delegation Poker is to drive home the idea of delegating decisions and tasks to your team within a controlled environment. It also is a good collaboration game. Many teams play it without even totalling points and more than anything else it's a conversation topic and a starting point for the discussion of who should do what.
How To Play Delegation Poker - YouTube
- Delegation is not a binary thing. There are plenty of 'shades of gray' between being a dictator and being an anarchist.
- Delegation is a step-by-step process. You hand over accountability to other people in a controlled and gradual way.
- Delegation is context-dependent. You want to delegate as much as possible but if you go too far chaos might unfold.
I introduced Delegation Poker to my project team. It helped a lot in our process of defining new responsibilities, which we as a team can now agree on. It's become the basis of discussion with our bosses as even they are able to understand the fact, 'that it can be easily migrated to the RACI Matrix.
Team leader, Ortrun offshoringDelegation Poker Karten Deutschland
How to play Delegation Poker?
Each team plays this game differently, so you can follow some of the more common rules we're sharing here or you can make up your own. It's all about organizing how you and your team look at delegation and self-organization.
Delegation Poker - YouTube
Team members should be organized in groups of three to seven people. Each teammate gets a set of cards numbered 1 through 7, signifying the Seven Levels of Delegation.
