Ingredients:

• Whiteboards and/or flip-charts
• Markers

Directions:

Divide the participants in to groups and ask them to graphically represent their current development process. Have them think about roles, artifacts produced, and challenges. Invite them to be creative and to not worry about using any formal notation (UML, Gantt Charts, RUP, etc.). Ask them not to use people’s names, or to criticize personalities.

Each team will then then present their creation to the whole group.

Learning Points:

• This is an interesting and fun way for a facilitator to gain visibility in to what is working and what the challenges are in an organization’s current process.

• This exercise also creates more transparency within a team, by giving people a chance to see how others characterize the process.

Posted by Mike

Ingredients:

• IDE + Unit Testing tool
• Timer

Directions:

Programmer 1 writes a test and challenges Programmer 2 to make it pass. Programmer 2 attempts to make it pass in as short of time as possible and then writes another test to try to stump Programmer 1. This test could be to fill any gaps that were exploited in the previous test, or to test another part of the system. This continues until all features have been implemented. A winner can be chosen based on total time taken to make tests pass. After each test passes, both programmers collaborate to refactor the solution. This time does not count towards the final score.

Learning Points:

• This game highlights the essence of Test-Driven Development, by only writing code for failing tests.
• Programmers end up producing the simplest solution that works. They then must have the discipline to refactor the solution when code-smells emerge.

Posted by Mike