Posts by Don:
- In Session 1, we of course kicked things off with a game
and then introduced our five step approach and shared some guidelines. The five steps are Problem, Lead objectives, Aspects, Invent, Debrief – PLAID (pronounced PLAYED ). We ended the first session by forming teams around the most popular Problems, who then presented their Lead objectives to the rest of the group. - Session 2 was all about Invention. While keeping in mind the principles of Inspiration, KISS, and Courage, teams collaborated and innovated until the beginnings of a game emerged.
- The main goal of Session 3 was to provide a safe environment for teams to present and play their games with the other participants and receive feedback.
- Copies of the twelve principles of agile software (http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html)
- White-boards and/or flip-charts
- Markers
- Divide participants in to groups, each with a white-board or flip-chart and markers.
- Have the teams write down the numbers 1 through 12.
- Challenge each team to, within a 15 minute time-box, come up with three words maximum that effectively capture each of the twelve principles.
- To avoid ‘analysis paralysis’, make sure to give the teams time updates throughout (e.g. 10, 5, 2, 1 minute warnings). You will find that teams will speed up towards the end.
- When time is up, go through each principle and discuss which are the most important words. Sometimes I like to ask people what their most and least favorite principles are.
- Post the condensed principles somewhere visible, so as to make it a regular talking point.
- Produce Value Early
- Welcome Change
- Iterative Delivery
- Daily Business Collaboration
- Trust Motivated Team
- Face to Face
- Working Software
- Sustainable Pace
- Technical Excellence
- K.I.S.S.
- Self-Organize
- Reflect and Adjust
- This is an effective way of capturing each principle in a much more concise and memorable way.
- Probably the most valuable part of this exercise, is in the discussion that the teams have when trying to come up with the words. They need to first understand the principle before breaking it down.
- Teams can establish a collective understanding and ownership of each principle.
- This also makes for a good review exercise in a classroom environment.
- Sizing board (a whiteboard or flip-chart or the like; divided into 5 columns: XS, S, M, L, XL)
- Timer
- A set of prepared stories
- A set of 5 X 3 cards
- Tape for attaching the cards to the board
- pick the top card off the deck
- attach a piece of tape to the card
- read the story on the card out loud
- assigns the card to one of the five columns on the board (XS, S, M, L. XL)
- provide a reason to the group
- start the timer for the next player
- Group user stories according to their relative size/effort
- Reach a democratic consensus quickly
- Ensure that each team member has a say
- Learn how user stories are captured
- Actively collaborate in a fun way
- Play with 3 (S,M.L) columns instead of 5 (XS, S, M, L. XL)
- Begin with 3 columns until the team requests more granularity, then the moderator adds additional columns
- Assign the Fibonacci sequence to the columns (1,2,3,5,8)
- A good-sized audience – 10 or more (the bigger the better)
- Pens & paper for all
- Your weight – although people tend to be generous and the estimates are usually low.
- Number of books available on Amazon.com
- Number of words on a page – I’ve had the most success with this one. In a class environment, I’ll use the lab write-up and have the students write their estimate on the back.
- Number of steps it takes to walk from one side of the room to the other – this one is fun, but you could get accused of rigging the outcome.
- Balloons in the room – only works if you played the 99 Test Balloons game earlier.
- Please leave a comment to share some of your ideas and experiences.
- To keep things quick, open a spread sheet to type in everybody’s estimate as they show them to you. This also makes it easy to calculate the average in front of everybody.
- Analyze the data with the class. You will likely get a very wide variance. I often find that no one individual estimate is as close as the average. This speaks to the true wisdom of the crowd and of the importance of diversity.
- To make it even more interesting, give a prize to whomever had the most accurate estimate.
- The accuracy of the group estimate is usually stronger than any one individual’s.
- The larger and more diverse the crowd is, the better the estimate.
- Agile embraces this principle by involving the whole team in estimating and planning and by encouraging the creation of cross-functional teams.
- Whiteboards and/or flip-charts
- Markers
- The agile manifesto is a set of factors that are considered common on successful projects.
- These successful factors are not entirely new to our industry.
- The agile manifesto does not prescribe specific practices, reaching a wide consensus on these would be very hard.
- Board (electronic or on white board)
- 20-30 Clues
- This is a fun and competitive way to review materials.
- 2 opposite facing white boards or flip charts
- Markers
- 10-20 clue cards
- This is a fun and competitive way to review materials.
- Examples of categories to draw: UML models, agile values and principles, roles on a project, design patterns, etc.
- One whiteboard per team
- This is a fun and competitive way to review materials.
Agile Game Incubator – Agile Games 2011
July 4th, 2011In April, Mike and I had the pleasure of doing another Game Incubator as an Agile Games 2011 Deep Dive session.
We facilitated three 90 minute sessions with a group of enthusiastic participants:
When the dust settled, we had 4 great games:
- Don’t Blow It – Lead Objective: Trust is important, yet hard to earn and easy to lose.
- The Big Payoff – Lead Objective: Maximize portfolio value by finishing smaller projects earlier to gain value sooner.
- Timebox Box – Lead Objective: The value of timeboxing.
- Pizza Portfolio – Lead Objective: Prioritize your portfolio to optimize the business’ ROI.
The next day, each incubator game was entered in the AgileGames Game Tournament. And out of all the excellent games played that day, ‘The Big Payoff’, conceived just the day before, won ‘Most Creative Game’! Congratulations to the creators, Alex Boutin and Erwin Van Der Koog!
Mike and I will be facilitating another Game Incubator at Agile 2011. Hope to see you there!
Deep Agile 2010: Empowering Teams with Agile Games
March 9th, 2010TastyCupcakes is excited to be a part of this year’s Deep Agile 2010, where the topic is ‘Empowering Teams with Agile Games’.
Come Join Don and Mike, along with other game guru’s like Tobias Mayer, Lyssa Adkins, and Portia Tung as they take you through a two-day deep dive into using collaborative and interactive games to enable Agile teams.
Pocket-sized Principles
January 24th, 2010Timing:
15 minutes
Ingredients:
Recipe:
This is an exercise that we came up with to better communicate the twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto. In their existing form, it is challenging for people to read and understand each principle and, just as importantly, to easily refer to them later.
Here is an example:
Learning Points:
TastyCupcakes Published in Agile Journal
November 10th, 2009Check out our new article with the Agile Journal!
Fun-Driven Development: Building Momentum Through Games
White Elephant Sizing
September 26th, 2009Note: If you haven’t heard of White Elephant Gift Exchanges before, read this.
Ingredients:
Recipe:
Have the team stand-up in a half circle facing their sizing board.
Shuffle a deck of story cards and place them face down on a table in front of the sizing board. Place a timer next to the cards.
The game begins when the facilitator starts the timer, which is the signal for the first member to perform the following steps:
It is important assigning the card to one of the five columns has to be the player’s own decision, without any external interference. This is why the player should provide the reason for his or her decision after the card has been assigned. If the player does not assign the card within one minute, the card will be assigned to the column in the middle. The player then restarts the timer for the next player.
After sizing the card, the player presents his or her reason. The reason may be based on expert knowledge, from past experiences, or observations from other projects. It is essential that the rest of the team observes and listens carefully to understand the overall context and development of the board. All other team members are therefore silent without discussions or judgment.
After a few rounds, there should be enough cards on the board to give the team members the option to, on their turn, move an existing card on the board into a different column instead of picking a new card from the deck. As before, the player reads the story out loud followed by a reason which supports the decision to re-size.
Once all user story cards are on the board and sized, each team member, on their turn, can either continue moving cards between columns or simply “pass” if they are satisfied with the current results. If a player does not make a decision within the one-minute time-limit, it will be interpreted as a “pass”.
The game ends when the pile of story cards is gone and every member of the team signals “pass”.
Challenges:
The biggest challenge in the beginning is the lack of a reference story – the Chihuahua (see Doggy Planning). Because no card has been assigned yet, the first player will not have something to compare his or her story to. And since the cards will be shuffled, we won’t know if the first stories are really small, medium, or large until we uncover more stories. This is OK and and important lesson of the game. Every player will have the opportunity to change their mind in future rounds, so the important thing is to just get started. Remember, the game does not stop until all players signal “pass”.
It is quite typical that two or more players disagree about a few assignments, and the card may end up endlessly moving up and down the board. If this happens, just take the card and place it on the bottom of the deck. That way, the sizing can continue and the card should have more context after all the other cards have been sized.
Learning Points:
Variations
CREDIT: Jochen Krebs
People Polling
July 14th, 2009Timing: 10 mins
Ingredients:
Recipe:
It is best to sneak this exercise in when it is least expected.
Start by selecting something in the room that is not easily counted or estimated. Take the time to write the exact number down and hide it from the audience.
Then, have each individual quickly and privately write down their own estimate.
Gather all of the estimates and calculate the average.
Cross your fingers and unveil the number that you wrote down earlier. It should be relatively close to the group average.
I have done similar exercises about a dozen or so times and the results are usually spot on. However, there is always a chance that the results could be off, so always make sure to start by announcing that you want to perform an experiment together. Participants will understand if the results are not perfect.
Some things you can use to estimate:
Other helpful hints:
Learning Points:
Presto Manifesto
June 25th, 2009Timing: 10 mins
Ingredients:
Recipe:
Begin by defining what success on a software development project means. Is it only about being on time and on budget? What about customer satisfaction?
Divide the participants in to groups and ask them to, based on their project experiences, come up with a list of criteria that they have noticed as critical elements on successful projects.
Ask them to reach a consensus within their team and have each member sign off on the criteria they agree with.
Look for patterns between each team’s list and then discuss. Compare each teams list with the list that the 17 signatories of the agile manifesto came up with.
You will be surprised at the results, regardless of the participants experience with agile. You will rarely see any team come up with prescriptive practices and I have yet to come across a list that did not include customer collaboration, communication, and team dynamics.
Learning Points:
Question Game
June 20th, 2009Timing: 20 mins
Ingredients:
Directions:
Divide the participants in to teams and select someone to choose the first clue category and dollar value. Read the clue out loud and have participants ‘buzz in’ by raising their hands. A correct response adds the corresponding dollar value to their teams total, while a wrong response subtracts the same amount and leaves the clue open for other teams to ‘buzz in’. A response must be in the form of a question! The person who last responded correctly, selects the next clue. A hidden ‘secret clue’ will allow the team that selected it to wager as much money as they want. The team with the most money after all the clues have been read wins.
Learning Points:
Picture Me
June 20th, 2009Timing: 30 mins
Ingredients:
Directions:
Divide participants in to two teams. One by one, each team member faces off against a member of the opposing team. Both are simultaneously shown the card and immediately start drawing pictures which suggest the word or phrase on a card (see learning points for examples of categories to draw). The pictures cannot contain any numbers or letters. The team members try to guess what the drawing is intended to represent. The team that first guesses correctly, wins a point. This continues until all team members have had a turn or until all the cards have been used.
Learning Points:
Posted by Don McGreal
Alphabet Game
June 20th, 2009Timing: 10 mins
Ingredients:
Directions:
Divide the participants in to teams and have them each write all the letters of the alphabet on their whiteboard. Then give the teams 5 minutes to write down a word that starts with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. All words must fit within a given category (e.g. agile concepts, patterns, programming terminology, etc.). Encourage participants to be creative, especially with the harder letters.
Award one point for each word.
Learning Points:
Posted by Don McGreal
