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TastyCupcakes 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.
May 15 and 16 in Boston, MA.
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)
Timing:
About 5 minutes per round. I typically like to run three or four rounds depending upon how quickly my class “gets it”.
Ingredients:
- Two people willing to play
- (Optional) Play money
Recipe:
I first was exposed to this game at a Toastmaster meeting. The facilitator only carried the example to the first round and made the point of cooperation. I’ve enhanced the game to make points about iteration retrospectives, specialization, and scaling.
The central activity in this exercise is a game of “Thumb Wars”. This is the same game you played as a child, in which the object is to pin your opponent (partner’s) thumb to their fist.
YouTube has many videos of this activity. A good example can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l649Ftx-0hM
When you run the game, some groups will figure out the messaging and techniques more quickly than others. Sometimes they never get it and you may have to walk them through it. Either way, it is very instructional and illustrates many lean and agile values.
GamePlay:
Demonstration: Ask the audience if they know how to play thumb wars. This question leads individuals to fond memories, anticipation and excitement. Then invite a member of the class to the front and demonstrate the game.
Ask people in class to pair off and tell them you will pay the person with the most wins a dollar for each win. (I have play money for this purpose)
Instruct that they will have a minute to play the game. Tell them that the object of the exercise is to “maximize gain”. Give them the “ready, set … go” and time them for about a minute.
Round 1 (Competition): In the first round of this game, the class typically thumbs it out. In round one, it is normal that I “pay out” four to six dollars to the person with the most wins. To conclude the round, I revisit the goal of maximizing gain, then ask players to discuss this with their partner for a while, then give them the “ready, set … go”.
Round 2 (Cooperation): Round two is usually characterized by a couple agreeing to cooperate and exchange wins. This works just like it sounds. Person A lets Person B win, then the reverse, and so on for the minute. I generally pay out about $30 per person to the winning team because, since they alternate, they tie in wins. The debrief includes a discussion about the value of cooperation over competition when people share the same goal. I once again remind the team that the goal is to “maximize gain”, give them another minute to discuss it and then “ready, set … go”
Round 3 (Specialization): Some members of the class will realize that an individual does not have to “win” to gain. The two people enter into a partnership in which Person A passively lays their thumb down onto their fist and Person B repeatedly taps it. I usually pay out about $120 to $180 to person A at the end of this round and they split the money per agreement. (if people can actually count that fast). The debrief discussion focuses on the value of role specialization and creativity in achieving gain. Sometimes we give the discussion a “lean” twist and talk about the waste associated with exchanging thumb positions in Round 2. We discuss again the goal of maximizing gain, do a brief retrospective, then “ready, set, … go”.
Round 4 (Scaling): Once again, some members of the class will realize that the instructions were “a dollar per pin” and “maximize gain”. Nothing was said about the number of playing fields. So some teams will realize that they can apply the knowledge gained from round 3 with both hands. Person A taps the thumb of person B with both their right and left thumbs and again as fast as possible, person A gets paid, then they split the money. But, by this time in the game, people cannot count the number of “wins”, so we give up on money. But everyone understands that the number is nearing $200 – $300 per person.
After I’ve debriefed Round 4, then we have a discussion of the value of retrospectives in increasing gain from about $6 to about $300.
Learning Points:
- Collaboration and cooperation maximizes gain over competition in groups with shared goals. (Competitive situations exist between functional groups in the waterfall process)
- Process retrospectives pay big dividends
- There are many different ways to improve a process. Creativity can lead to more efficient ways to cooperate, specialize and scale. If you can achieve such fantastic results ($6 -> $300) with this silly game, think what you can do with a complex software development project.
- This whole game, from end to end, can be presented as an exercise in value stream mapping and waste elimination if the facilitator wishes to take that approach.
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 4.7/5 (3 votes cast) This post was submitted by skillen.
Timing:
15 minutes
Ingredients:
- Copies of the twelve principles of agile software (http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html)
- White-boards and/or flip-charts
- Markers
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.
- 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.
Here is an example:
- 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
Learning Points:
- 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.
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 4.0/5 (2 votes cast) This post was submitted by Don McGreal.
Mike McCullough and Don McGreal, the founders of TastyCupcakes, recently recorded a podcast on agile games and TastyCupcakes with Mike Abney, Allen Hurst and Ed Grannan at Improving Enterprises.
We discuss the application of games, some of our favourites and the history behind the name TastyCupcakes.
Give it a listen, we hope you enjoy it!
Timing:
15-20 minutes
Ingredients:
Each table (with 5-6 students) has a plastic shoe-box containing enough supplies for 20 pinwheels (would need less most likely). Make sure that you make samples of what the pinwheels are supposed to look like for each group. HOWEVER, make sure that the sample pinwheels are not in the shoebox at first. The students should not even know they exist. Here’s the supplies in each box.
- Straws
- Paper fasteners
- Paper copies of the pinwheel pattern to cut out
- Scissors
- Markers
- Paper punch
- Shoe-box size plastic containers (to hold the supplies at each table)
Recipe:
This is conducted in two rounds, with three slides (two slides in round 1, and one additional slide for round 2).
Round 1
Slide 1
Your job is to create as many pinwheels as you can in 5 minutes. Take a minute, and assign the following roles at each table:
- Cutter – owns the scissors and completes the cutting
- Decorator/Designer – owns the markers and creates the design for the pinwheel
- Hole Puncher & Paper Fastener – owns the hole puncher and the paper fasteners
- Folder – does any necessary manipulation or folding of the paper during the creation of the pinwheel
- Tester – tests the pinwheel when it has been finished. Verify that it has been decorated and that it at least moves a little when someone blows.
- Manager – responsible for telling each team member what to do. The manager will communicate the tasks to the team members. The team members are not allowed to see the instructions.
Slide 2
- At your table there is a box. Each box contains the instructions and the supplies.
- No one is allowed to step outside their role.
- The manager is the only one that can speak, by instructing the team members. Each team member is only allowed to speak to the manager.
- If the pinwheel fails testing, the tester must hand the pinwheel back to who they think caused the “bug”.
At this point, the teams DO NOT see the sample. They don’t even know a sample exists
Now, start the timer. After 5 minutes, they will likely create 0 pinwheels.
Round 2
Slide 1
- Manager, you are now a servant leader. Please do whatever it takes to help the team.
- Team members are allowed to help others out.
- You can cross role boundaries.
- Everyone can read the instructions. You can use the instructions as a guideline, but you can now be creative in how you create the pinwheels.
- First, take 2 minutes to discuss how you will work together to be more efficient. Then, you will have 5 minutes to create as many pinwheels as possible.
Here, the team goes through a time-boxed planning session of 2 minutes to figure out how to best make the pinwheels before the 5 minute pin-wheel making session. I also pull out the sample pinwheel, so the team can have a collective understanding of what the “vision” is.
During this second round, the teams made between 5-10 pinwheels. The ones who made less had issues with the “servant leader” concept, which made for a great discussion afterwords.
This is a bit of a pain in the butt to set up, but in the end, it is WELL worth it, and now I have the supplies for many classes to come!
Learning Points:
This exercise illustrates the following points.
- Cross functional team work
- Self organizing teams are more effective than those teams under a command-and-control regime
- Team members must be able to cross functional silos to be the most efficient
- Managers are the most effective when they are serving the team, not telling the team what to do
- Over-specialization causes bottle-necks (you’ll notice that some functions will be far ahead of others, such as the “cutters”, and others will be far behind, such as the designers)
- It’s important for the team to take time to retrospect and plan together
It is up to you whether you discuss after each round what was experienced. I only had the discussion at the end, and compared and contrasted the ways of working. I plan on introducing lean concepts in subsequent sessions, such as “eliminate waste”. The “cutters” tended to stack the papers and cut out lots of patterns, which introduced a lot of waste in the end, as the hole punchers, folders and designers couldn’t keep up. I may add a round 3 to illustrate this.
pinwheel_instructions_and_cutout.zip (93 KB)
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 4.7/5 (3 votes cast) This post was submitted by Andre Simones.
Timing:
45-60 mins
Ingredients:
- Pens & paper for all
- Business team, with shared domain responsibility. For example, the HR department or Sales team. You can have a mixture so long as there is overlap.
Recipe:
- Explain some basic workflow/process mapping mechanics and identify the Value Stream.
- Have each person (or groups of two or three depending on size of the audience) map the Value Stream identified above. Give 15-20 minutes to this activity and encourage discussion.
- Once completed, post each Value Stream Map on the wall and have all participants compare and contrast their results. There will almost certainly be differences.
- Then discuss the challenges with optimizing the business process to eliminate Waste (Muda) and improve Flow(Mura) when there is not a clear and consistent picture of the business process itself. Look for examples in the different maps provided that would lead to inefficient or potentially harmful improvements that might be attempted.
Other helpful hints:
If the maps provided are relatively consistent then the discussion is not warranted and a congratulation on the maturity of the group is all that is needed and you can move on to improving flow, eliminating waste and mapping future state.
Learning Points:
- It is not unusual for the people in an operational business unit to have very divergent perspectives of how the operation actually runs. It is particularly pronounced between management and frontline workers.
- A valid and real perspective of the Process Map is absolutely critical before beginning any discussion about how to improve it.
Posted by Mike McCullough
Credit:
This game kindly submitted by Angela Hlavka, President, iluminari Inc.VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 2.5/5 (2 votes cast)
Ingredients:
- 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
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:
- 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
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:
- 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
Variations
- 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)
CREDIT: Jochen Krebs
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 4.2/5 (5 votes cast) This post was submitted by Don McGreal.
Timing:
20-40 mins
Ingredients:
- Paper, pens, whiteboard and markers
Recipe:
Briefly review the four value statements from the Agile Manifesto.
One at a time for each statment ask the group to write down an example (60 -90 seconds). In turn have everyone read their example aloud. Ask the group to choose the example they like best, write it on the board (two is fine if there is a split or close call).
Learning Points:
- This Agile Game helps to prompt and establish an understanding how the values of Agile will and should impact a particular group or organization. The exercise is a complement to describing the general meaning and intent of these values which is still an important conversation. The intent intent here is to create understanding and self discovery for the participants in their environment.
- Begins the establishment of a new set of norms since these are examples of behaviour that the team has defined.
- For a coach new to an organization this can also help you better understand the challenges a team and organization will face culturally and systemically.
Posted by Mike McCullough
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 4.0/5 (3 votes cast)
Timing: 10 mins
Ingredients:
- A good-sized audience – 10 or more (the bigger the better)
- Pens & paper for all
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:
- 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.
Other helpful hints:
- 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.
Learning Points:
- 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.
VN:F [1.8.4_1055] Rating: 4.7/5 (6 votes cast) This post was submitted by Don McGreal.
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