Purpose

The goal of the game is to start the conversation within the team about their development process, in this case, by using the Agile-Scrum framework. By asking open ended questions, the facilitator would help the team discover areas of improvement identified by the team, help with clarifying some concepts and show the team how easy it’s to inspect and adapt their own development process.

When to use it

This game could be used with new teams (everybody is new), when a new member is joining the scrum team or even when the Scrum Master/Agile Coach/Facilitator is the one joining the team. The main focus of the game is to get alignement about the Scrum framework, which could be used to guide the Scrum Master/Agile Coach/Facilitator with:

  • what needs to be improved and in which order (prioroty)
  • what’s unclear, unknown about the scrum framework. (What does requires reinforcement?)
  • what’s working and what’s not.
All that above, based on the team’s perspective.

Prerequisites

2) A facilitator
3) A board, some markers, some post-its and good attitude.
4) How many participants: minimun one, maximum to try out.

Timing

  • Preparation: 5 minutes to print out the required material
  • Duration: Between 50 minutes and 60 minutes, depending on how engaged the team is when discussing about what to improve

Instructions

Explore & Identify (5 minutes)

  • Distribute  “Agile – Scrum framework at glance baseline image” printed to each team member present in the room.
  • Tell the team to take a look to the “Agile – Scrum framework at glance baseline image” and ask them to write down one issue per post-it, about those areas in the chart that: (1)Require some kind of improvement (2) Are not clear/unknown
  • Note: it’s up to the facilitator to limitated the amount of reported issues, so then you can reach the time box that works better for you.
  • Set a timebox between 3 to 5 minutes, and then let the team alone writting down the issues found.
  • Once the timebox has gone, ask the team if anybody needs more time. If the answer is no, then move on to the next step.
Discuss (30 minutes)
  • Open the floor to discussion by asking for volunteers to expose identified issues.
  • At this point of the game, it’s suggested to ask open ended questions in order to clarify each identified issue.
  • i.e: What is important about the issue that you are presenting us?
  • i.e: What have you considered when raising the issue?
  • Once everybody has presented their own issue, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Group and decide (15 to 20 minutes)
  • Now that everything is discussed, ask for a volunteer to help the team with grouping all the post-its, by using the areas available in the “Agile – Scrum framework at glance baseline image”
  • Give the team some dots stickers to vote (usually I give them to vote = amount of members in the room – 1)
  • Once everybody has dot voted, ask them to organize the identified issues in order, based on how many dot votes has got.
  • Now aske the team to identify one action that could help the team with improving the identified issue.
  • NOTE: If something is unclear/unknown is up to you to decide when to explained. I usually do it, once the question is raised.

Expected outcomes

  • Common and shared understanding about where the team is regarding the Scrum framework
  • What’s important for the team, about the development process.
  • The team got empowered to adapt its own development process to its own needs.
  • A high level actionable improvement plan has been created by the team.
  • The first seed for a self-organized team has been deployed.

Thank you for reading.

All the best,

Jesús E. Méndez A.

www.jesusmendez.ca