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

Ingredients:

• 2 equal sets of wooden train track with some complexities (bridges, tunnels, etc)
• Create a set of requirements and put a score on each (Different degrees of complexity and value are important)
• Test the event yourself to get a sense of time

Directions:

• Split into at least two groups
• Split the groups into the “big release” and “iterative” groups
• Tell them that their customer is a parent who want to “buy” a product to keep their child entertained
• Explain that you are willing to pay higher amounts for more requirements being met, for example:
  • A train track with no dead ends is worth $25
  • Bridges that go over track (instead of nothing) are worth $10 each
  • Track that isn’t tense and has some wiggle in it is worth $5 (keeps it from being forced and broken)
  • If every piece can be reached without lifting the train, that is $25
  • If every piece can be reached and crossed in both directions without lifting the train, that is $25
• Tell the “big release” group that they will go until they decide to ship their product
• Tell the iterative group that they should strive to ship a product at the end of every minute (you tell them when they have 10 sec to go)
• Go!
• Every minute, take a snapshot and determine how much money the iterative group would make if they shipped their product at that moment
• When the “big release” group meets all the requirements or calls it quits, stop the game.
  • In theory the iterative group will have banked money over each iteration and made multiple times the amount of money the big bang group would have made. Talk about how long it will take the iterative group before they have to match the other group’s requirements. Talk about how this would play out in real life if each minute was equal to a week of work.

Learning Points:

• Understand how sprints affect delivery
• Delivering business value sooner is more profitable
  • Have a shippable product each sprint to do so
• You can retain customers by giving them something simpler and working to the “real” goal over time
  • would the customer have waited for the “big bang” group to deliver the full product or appeased the crying child with the iterative groups earlier solution (remember… minutes equaled weeks of dev. time)

CREDIT: Kevin Schlabach

Posted by Mike

Ingredients:

• Stop Watch

Directions:

Round one
Each person pairs off with another, preferably someone they do not know.
Each pair then chooses who will be the manager and who will be the worker.
The manager will direct the worker to walk 60 normal paces within two minutes using only the following 6 commands: Go, Stop, Left, Right, Faster, Slower.
After two minutes are up, ask for a show of hands for how many completed the 60 paces.

Round two
There are no managers or workers. Each individual can direct themselves. Again, the goal is to walk 60 paces in two minutes. After two minutes are up, ask for a show of hands for how many completed the 60 paces.

Learning Points:

• Comparison between command and control and self organizing teams and the underlying efficiency of the latter.

CREDIT: Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum

Posted by Mike

Ingredients:

• Index Cards
• Supplies for each team: construction paper, glue, rulers, scissors, markers
• Magazines for clipping images
• Iteration status board (whiteboard, wall, etc.)

Directions:

In teams of four or more, participants must agree on a wish list for what they would like to see in a brochure for their ultimate resort. Using index cards, teams must then write user stories for the brochure (e.g. As a parent, I want a kid friendly atmosphere so that I can feel comfortable bringing children; As an owner, I want to advertise a special offer so that I can attract more vacationers; etc.). The team’s elected Product Owner must then prioritize each story by placing the cards in order of importance.

The teams then prepare for a 12 minute iteration (three 4 minute days) by selecting which stories they think they can accomplish in the first iteration. For each selected story, the team defines acceptance criteria (definition of ‘done’) in order to clarify requirements and to extract tasks (e.g. find picture of beach, write the resort name on brochure, create layout, etc.). Each task is placed on an iteration status board in the ‘Scheduled’ column and the iteration starts.

Each day of the iteration should start with a quick Scrum meeting, where the participants move tasks over to the ‘Completed’ column and volunteer for tasks by moving them over to the ‘Active’ column. Any blocked tasks are moved to the ‘Blocked’ column. After the Scrum meeting, each member should start producing in accordance with the acceptance criteria until the three days and the iteration end. An iteration should end with a demo of their progress and a retrospective, in which each team lists what they did well and what they can improve on for the next iteration. Repeat iterations as necessary.

Learning Points:

• This is a great mini-simulation of Scrum. It provides each participant with a sense of control and visibility in to all the work that is going on.

Posted by Don McGreal

Ingredients:

• Football (or some other kind of ball)

Directions:

In order to enforce the rules of the daily stand-up meeting and to keep it more entertaining, a football can be used. Only those holding the football can speak. Once they have completed answering their questions, they can throw the football to another team member who has not yet spoken. This continues until all members have spoken. It is up to each individual to remember who has not spoken. You can implement penalties for violations of the rules (scoreboard, $1 to the happy hour or lunch fund, etc.)

Learning Points:

• Tracking who has not yet spoken and the expectation of receiving the football keeps everybody alert, involved, and entertained.
• Only one member speaks at a time.

Posted by Don McGreal