Organization and prioritization are two distinct activities that can be used to improve the quality of a product backlog. A simple linear list is difficult to prioritize. As well, many stakeholders are forgotten in the rush to deliver customer value. See example list of stakeholders. The purpose of this game is to expand the view of multiple stakeholders as well as illuminate the value of organizing the work without prioritizing.

Learning Points

● The value of organizing before prioritizing

Timing

45 minutes. (Variant: drop a round to shorten)

Ingredients

The game consists of the following items for each participating team:

1. Persona Cards: (5”x8” cards) There are four persona cards or sheets. Each persona should be copied to a separate card.
2. Story Cards: (3”x5” cards) In this game, the stories consist of a verb and a noun (e.g Fertilize Crops). There are 18 cards, but more cards can be added. One verb noun grouping should be copied to each card.
3. Category Cards: (3”x5” blank cards – use different colour than story cards) – The category cards are initially blank. A set of blank cards are needed for each round and team. Typically there are around 5 Categories per round.
4. Black Marker: Any pen or felt tip mark should work. This is used for writing on the category cards. One timer is needed in order to time each round and the debrief sessions.

Recipe

1. Introduction (5 min)
   • Draw simple Product Backlog in Scrum
   • Ask participants what it is
   • Comment that there is a lot of complexity that may not be best represented by asingle sorted list.
2. Form the group into teams – each at a table. (2 min) 4 seems a good number for a team. More than this and it is hard to jointly sort the cards. 5 may be OK.
3. Introduce the domain. Once upon a time, there was a farm and different people had different ideas how the farm should be run. (MORE)
4. Iterate! There are 4 rounds – each with a different persona (see table below)
   • Shuffle story cards between rounds
   • Introduce Persona (1 min + 1 min for questions)
   • Ask participant organize the backlog based on the persona.
   • Debrief the round. Do this in a circle. See debrief questions below.
5. Debrief the whole game.

Round 1

• Persona: Producer/Farmer
• Round Duration: 5′
• Debrief*: 4′

Round 2

• Persona: Customer/Buyer
• Round Duration: 4′
• Debrief*: 3′

Round 3

• Persona: Farm Bureau/Inspectors
• Round Duration: 4′
• Debrief*: 3′

Round 4

• Persona: Land Owner
• Round Duration: 3′
• Debrief*: 10′ – whole game

* Larger groups may require more debrief time.

Debrief Questions

First Round

• Each team: talk a little about how you organized the backlog.
• What is the same/different?
• What else did you notice?
• If no one mentions, may notice that we are used so used to prioritizing we often go there automatically. Did any of the teams create a structure that helps them understand their world?

Second/Third

• Same questions as first plus
• What was different from earlier round(s)?

Final

• Over all 4 rounds, what have you noticed about backlog organization?
• How does this relate to product backlogs that you work with?
• How well do real world product backlogs represent different stakeholders?

Story Cards

There are 18 story cards. Each story card consists of a verb and noun pair.

(Note: Michael S removed story numbers since it may confuse people)

Stories:

• Fertilize Crops
• Spray Insecticide
• Harvest Crop
• Buy Seed
• Rotate Crops
• Weed Fields
• Survey Market
• Kill Groundhogs
• Lay Fallow
• Define Market Needs
• Till The Ground
• Assure Organic (inspect for selected crops)
• Plant Seed
• Sell Early Summer Crops
• Sell Late Summer Crops
• Water Plants
• Recover from Natural Disaster
• Forecast Profit

Personas

Producer / Farmer

As a farmer, I’m focused on legally maximizing my profits by controlling costs, buying the right seeds, planning crop rotations, reducing pests, and timing the release of my products to markets. I follow closely the agreements set forth in the lease with the Land Owner.

Consumer / Buyer

As a customer of the local farm, I want healthy and reasonably priced food that has been grown with sustainable and environmentally friendly practices.

Land Owner

The farm land has been in my family for over 200 years. My family’s income depends on the revenue generated from the farm lease. Hence, we are interested in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the land. As a family, we have been engaged in wildlife preservation and conservation of natural resources. It is imperative our property used in accordance with all relevant laws and regulations.

Farm Bureau / Inspectors / Regulatory Agencies

As a regulatory body, we are tasked with ensuring that produce is safe and fit for human consumption. We test and verify that the land is used in accordance with local, state, and federal regulation to protect from erosion, run off, soil depletion and other activities that may harm the land. We enforce all animal protection laws and regulations.

FAQ

There are no story points (cost). How does this make any sense?

The whole point of the game is to ignore prioritization. Story cost is only relevant for making prioritization decisions. In this game we want people to think about stakeholders and how to organize the work in terms of who cares about what.

Credits

This game was developed at Deep Agile 2010 in Boston by:

• Michael Sahota
• Mary Gorman
• Warren Elliott
• Greg Ott
• Dan Zaino
• Judy Rivais

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:

1. Produce Value Early
2. Welcome Change
3. Iterative Delivery
4. Daily Business Collaboration
5. Trust Motivated Team
6. Face to Face
7. Working Software
8. Sustainable Pace
9. Technical Excellence
10. K.I.S.S.
11. Self-Organize
12. 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.

This post was submitted by Don McGreal.

• 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

This post was submitted by Don McGreal.

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

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.

This post was submitted by Don McGreal.

Ingredients:

• Whiteboards
• Markers
• Set of four coloured sticky notes for each player

Recipe:

Begin by reviewing the four value statements from the Agile Manifesto.  Draw on the whiteboard a matrix of complexity on the vertical axis  and impact on the horizontal axis with a scale of low, medium and high. Draw out all 9 resulting boxes of the matrix. 

Assign a colour (one of the four sticky note colours) to each of the four statements in the manifesto.

Ask all particpants to place each of their four stickies into the appropriate place on the matrix based on their assessment of the impact and compexity the value statement it represents.

Encourage discussion amongst players while placing their sticky notes.

Once completed review what the group has assessed as the impact and challenge of adopting the value system implied by the Agile Manifesto 

Learning Points:

• Reinforces and drives meaningful discussion about the Values and Principles of Agile
• Facilitates the discussion about what Agile means to the team and organization.
• Set’s the stage for understanding the purpose and intent of Agile practices and techniques.

Posted by Mike McCullough

Ingredients:

• Whiteboards and/or flip-charts
• Markers

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:

• 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.

This post was submitted by Don McGreal.

Ingredients:

• People and space
• 1 stop watch
• Optionally, something to record the audio with.

Directions:

Have the team sit/stand in a circle. You want to get a story of the last sprint that is told by the entire team. You start by saying ‘Once upon a time , we had a X (insert sprint length here!) week sprint…’. Then, the next person to your left adds to your sentence and this carries on until the last person has spoken or if the story is developing in an interesting direction, until all the points appear to have been made and there is nothing of value coming through. You might want to strictly enforce the time limit for a large team.

After the retrospective , you could run the game again to tell the story of the next sprint, and this should galvanise the improvements that will take place and nicely summarise the lessons learnt and help the team visualise how the next sprint could be better. This game helps to create an ongoing shared goal and represents an oral history of the software process.

Learning Points:

• Discover a consensus view of the success/failures from the last sprint.
• Empower everyone to add value to a collective goal through participation.
• Exercise the ‘responding to change’ learning point from the word-at-a-time letter game.

CREDIT: Mike Sutton

Posted by Mike

Ingredients:

• 1 set of planning poker cards per participant.
• http://www.crisp.se/planningpoker/

Directions:

Participants in an estimation meeting are each given a set of cards. Each card contains an estimate. Units used vary, they can be days, ideal days, story points, etc. The cards are numbered to account for the fact that the longer an estimate is, the more uncertainty it contains (e.g 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40). When an item (feature, task, etc.) is presented, without mentioning numbers, a discussion takes place to clarify assumptions and risks.
Each participant then lays a card face down representing their estimate. Simultaneously, the cards are turned over. If all estimates are relatively close, then there is no more discussion needed, the estimate is recorded and the group moves on to the next item. If some participants had high or low estimates, then they are given a chance to justify their estimate as they may have been thinking of something others were not aware of. Repeat the estimation process until a consensus is reached.

Learning Points:

• The wisdom of crowds is more accurate than individual estimates.
• Using the cards avoids the influence of others while estimating.
• It encourages all team members to participate
• Discourages the talkative members from dominating (too soon anyway).

CREDIT: James Grenning

Posted by Mike

Ingredients:

• Stop Watch

Directions:

Have participants pair up and sit side by side so they’re both facing the same direction. Decide who will be partner A and who will be partner B.

Tell them to write a letter together, one word at a time. Partner A starts with the word “Dear.” Partner B follows with the name of the recipient.” Continue until they have completed writing the letter to the recipient. If they finish the first letter before you call time, have them start another one and continue until notified to stop.

Learning Points:

• Agile development embraces uncertainty and the unknown. The emotional experience of not knowing what is next is intended to quickly emulate the feeling and to setup a discussion about it.

CREDIT: Agile Educator’s Toolkit (v1.7), Kert D. Peterson, Enterprise Agile Group, LLC

Posted by Mike