Software engineers are often seen by others as loony nerds (or weirdos) who are spending most of their time “interacting” with machines. And the more time passes, the more they are leaving the boundaries of “humanity” and becoming machines of their own. And within this transformation they seem to lose their emotionality and empathy (or emotional intelligence in general). The Misemotions Game is a great…
Iterative Incremental Big Bang
Timing: 30-60 minutes expected running time (including prep and debrief) Overview: Iterative, Incremental, Big Bang is a workshop game to encourage people to think about alternative approaches for tackling projects. However, rather than discuss boring work-like scenarios, it asks players to decide on an approach for everyday scenarios like converting a loft, cooking Sunday lunch or building a nuclear submarine! Materials: Iterative Incremental Big Bang cards (available on Amazon) A…
The Roast
Many Agile practitioners scoff at the very idea of managers in the context of Agile teams. However, they are often a necessity of existing companies. So, we should do the most to have them contribute and align with team members. This exercise give an avenue for honest, detailed feedback from the team to their manager. This game is recommended only for teams with high trust…
“Hitting the Target” — Business Value in Mission-Focused Organizations
How should organizations prioritize work in the face of conflicting goals and metrics? Help more people? Minimize delays? Prosecute more crimes? Lower costs? In this game participants will experience a dice-based simulation that has been created to explore these questions by examining the impact of these decisions on the performance of organizations in changing environments.
Daily Stand Up Simulation
Daily Stand-up is the most visible and widely used Agile practice. This Stand-up simulation works quite well with either team, new, that never run the stand-ups before or experienced team, looking to make their stand-ups more productive. For new teams, I normally run “Yes and Story” Improv game before this simulation. This way group gets a fair understanding of team collaboration and what it takes…