Collaborative Techniques

Andrew RuslingAgile Coach

2Contents

1. Collaborative Techniques

2. Game Plan

3. Problem Solving

3

Collaborative Techniques

4Games

Collaborative Technique = Game

Why use games

• Games are a great way to learn

• Games help us step out of mental boundaries

• Games allow us to collaborate in safety

• Games can be very short, or long and elaborate.

• Small games combine well to create other games.

5Three broad types

OpeningDivergent

Generating more ideas

ExploringEmergent

Categorising, Understanding

ClosingDivergent

Deciding, Choosing

Idea Decision

6

Game Plan

7The situation

• I have won the lotto!

• You are awesome game designers

• Who I hired for my new game company

• We have enough money to hire anybody we need

• We are going to design an online computer game

• We are going to plan it’s delivery

• This will be done using a series of ‘games’.

Photo credit: http://taxrebate.org.uk/

8Ideation of game ideas

Whiteboard brainstorming

Pros

• Easy to build upon ideas

• Facilitator clarifies ideas

Cons

• Facilitator is a bottleneck

• Hard to rearrange items

• Limited by white space

9Choose game idea

Dot Voting

1. Facilitator decides on how many dots each player gets.

2. Players take turns marking the available items with their dots.

3. Players may allocate all of their dots to one item, or spread them out.

4. The items can then be ordered by the total number of dot votes received.

5. Ties can be decided with one extra vote per participant just on the tie breaker items.

10Dot Voting

Good to choose couple of items to work on

Considerations

• How many dots? Usually 3 or 5

• Influence vs. Power?

11User Story Mapping

It is composed of the following games:

1. Silent index card writing

2. Sharing and elaborating

3. Affinity mapping

4. Above the line prioritisation

12Ideation of game features

Aim: Generate ideas for game features

Silent index card writing

• Why in silence?• Speed

• Remove influence

• Why on index cards? Why not post-it notes?• Slide easily

• More tangible

• Correct size for User Stories

• Double sided, for extra notes

• Easy to transport

• Why write in large font?• Easy to read, hence promotes understanding and elaboration

• Easy to type up later

13Share and elaborate on features

Aim: Build understanding and improve ideas

Pros

• Promotes shared understanding

• Promotes building upon ideas (which is missed in Silent writing)

• Identifies duplicate and similar items

Cons

• Much slower than everyone just placing their own items

14Categorisation of features

Aim: Better understand our features and prepare for Release Planning

Affinity Mapping Instructions

1. Write ideas on cards

2. Remove duplicates

3. Cluster similar items

4. Place similar clusters close to each other

5. Label the clusters, and clusters of clusters

6. Confirm cluster contents match the label, splitting clusters as necessary

15Affinity Mapping (Steps 1..4)

DuplicatesDuplicatesDuplicatesA

DuplicatesDuplicatesB

DuplicatesDuplicates2

ab

e

aaa

aa

3

41

4

43

• Stacked cards are duplicates (i.e. in the A, B & 2 piles)• A and B are very similar• E is more like A and B than 3, 2 or 4• 2, 3 & 4 are very similar• 2, 3 & 4 are not similar to A and B

• aa and aaa are variants of A (aka similar)• ab is a variant of A and B• 41 & 43 are variants of 4

16Affinity Mapping (Steps 5..6)

DuplicatesDuplicatesDuplicatesA

DuplicatesDuplicatesB

DuplicatesDuplicates2

e

aa

3

41

4

43

Engagement

ab

Metrics

Events

Build

Tools

CodeDeploy

Community

aaa

• aaa & ab moved into events

17Release Planning

Aim: Split features into three releases.

Above the line prioritisation instructions

1. Write all items on index cards

2. Place them on the bottom of long table edge

3. Mark out a line half way up the table.

4. Ask participants to move half of the items above the line.

5. Repeat with the top half.

6. You now have top priority ¼, next priority ¼ and low priority ½ .

18Above the line prioritisation

Steps 1..3

Step 4

Step4

again

Step3

again

19Above the line prioritisation

Pros

• Quick

• Allows for relative prioritisation

• Prevent everything is top priority

Cons

• Does not producing ordering.

20Describe our game

Aim: Create tag line & list of key differentiators.

Fist of Five instructions

1. On count of three all participants hold up their fingers in response to the sample statement.

• Five – total agreement, awesome idea.

• Four – agree, could be improved but still good

• Three – go with majority, will accept if the majority gives 4/5

• Two – disagree, needs correction/changes

• One – veto, it is completely wrong

2. Discuss Ones, then Twos.

3. Potentially make changes to statement

4. Potentially revote or throw out the statement.

21Fist of Five

Pros

• Builds consensus, gradually

• Discovers reasons for lack of consensus, allowing for them to be addressed

Cons

• Confronting for some people, when describing their reasons.

• Needs a statement to vote on

22

Problem Solving

23Five Whys

Cause

Problem

Why?

CauseWhy?

CauseWhy?

CauseWhy?

Root CauseWhy?

24Causal Loop Diagrams

• Wikipedia

• Explained by Henrik Kniberg

Number of chickens

Number of road

crossings

Number of eggs

++

+-

25Fishbone Diagrams

Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vuhung/

26

Wrap up

27Summary

1. Collaborative Techniques1. Games

2. Opening, Exploring, Closing

2. Game Plan1. Ideation of game ideas (Whiteboard brainstorming)

2. Choose game idea (Dot Voting)

3. Ideation of game features (Silent Note writing)

4. Sharing and elaborating of features

5. Categorise features (Affinity Mapping)

6. Release Planning (Above the line prioritisation)

7. Describe our game (Fist of Five)

3. Problem Solving1. Five Whys

2. Causal Loop Diagrams

3. Fishbone Diagrams

28

https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlos_maya/

1 - 3 Key Learning Points

One person at a time

Your answers don’t have to be unique

29Reference Material

Tasty Cup Cakes – stupid name, good free games