AI and Agile Workshop Series
Grey County had two problems and wanted two solutions. One working group wanted to understand AI responsibly before deploying it in government services. Another wanted to adopt agile practices for a small development team. I designed and facilitated four separate workshops to address both needs across two months.
Parallel Workshop Tracks
Two separate 2-workshop series addressing different needs: AI foundations vs. agile practices
Two Different Needs
Grey County reached out with two separate requests that landed on my desk at the same time. The first came from an AI working group with 10 staff from across departments. They wanted to explore AI but didn't know where to start. They had heard stories about AI going wrong and wanted to move carefully and responsibly.
The second came from a small development team of 8 people. They were building software for county operations but felt stuck in their current process. They'd heard about agile and wanted to understand if it could help them work faster and more collaboratively.
I could have run the same generic workshops. Instead, I designed them separately to match each group's actual needs.
The AI Workshop Series
With the AI working group, I started with fundamentals. What is an AI model and what can it actually do? The first workshop was a primer that got everyone to the same baseline. But I didn't just lecture. I ran hands-on exercises where people used AI tools and watched them fail or succeed in specific ways.
The second workshop was about application. We used an Options Analysis framework to help the group think through whether AI was right for a specific problem they wanted to solve. We asked questions like: What decision are we trying to make? What data do we have? What would success look like? Could we accomplish this without AI?
The last part was about being a good citizen. We talked about bias in training data. About transparency. About telling people when they're interacting with an AI. About the ethical side of deploying technology in government.
The Agile Workshop Series
The agile group had a different challenge. They understood traditional project management. They planned everything up front. They wrote requirements in detail. They delivered in phases.
But they also felt like they were always behind. Users would request changes mid-project. The final product never quite matched what people actually needed. The team felt reactive instead of proactive.
I designed two interactive workshops focused on mindset, not process. The first one was about embracing change and feedback. We ran exercises where teams had to build something physical without detailed instructions, then iterate based on feedback. The point was to show that small, frequent changes are better than big, infrequent ones.
The second workshop was about practices. We ran exercises on how to prioritize items, break down stories, and understand user needs. I left them with templates they could actually use, not a thick manual that would sit on a shelf.
Building for Sustainability
The most important thing I did was create materials the County could keep and reuse. Workshop slide decks. Facilitator guides. Templates for user stories and sprint planning. Case studies they could reference when questions came up.
I didn't want to stay the expert in the room forever. I wanted the group to reach a point where they could run this work themselves, talk to other teams, and keep learning on their own.
I also made sure to explicitly address skepticism. There were people in both groups who weren't sure this was worth their time. I acknowledged that. I showed them why their skepticism was reasonable and addressed it directly. By the end, even the skeptics had questions instead of resistance.
Impact
The workshops scored an NPS of 8, which is excellent. Post-workshop surveys showed increased knowledge about AI and increased appreciation for design thinking as a lens for making decisions.
More importantly, 18 municipal staff left with frameworks they could actually use. Not abstract principles, but tools. The AI group went on to pilot an AI solution based on the Options Analysis framework. The agile group shipped their first feature in a sprint cycle without external help.
Knowledge Transfer: Skeptics to Practitioners
18 staff members went from doubts to having actionable frameworks they use independently
Key Learnings
• Teaching is transfer of experience. Experience comes from doing, not from listening. The best workshops include hands-on exercises and real problems.
• Acknowledge resistance directly. Don't pretend everyone is going to love the change. Address the skepticism head on.
• Materials matter. Give people templates and guides they can use after you're gone. Don't make them reinvent the wheel.
• Different groups need different approaches. One generic workshop doesn't serve 18 people with different needs and different learning styles.