Scrum Game

Learning the principles of the Agile manifesto

1. OPEN BACKLOGS THAT TRIGGER IDEATING over DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS TO FOLLOW

Invitation for collaboration between a customer and teams

2. MINDFUL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT over A SERIES OF TASKS TO ACCOMPLISH

Teach product development, not micromanagement on a task level

3. TEAMS COLLABORATING TOWARD COMMON SUCCESS over COMPETITION FOR SCORE

A chance to practice skills of inter-team collaboration

4. USEFUL METRICS TO ASSESS BENEFITS OF AGILE over FIGURES THE TRAINERS ASKED TO COLLECT

teach the team to own their process

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Organization

• Teams of 4 to 8

• Timing: ~100 minutes

• Boxes of bricks: lego, kapla,…

• Board, markers, flipboard sheets of paper, sticky-notes

• Big table: ideally one per team

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Roles

• Product Owner: this is me. I represent the client.

• Team members: all of you.

• Scrum master: optional. The game can be played without scrum master. This is up to you: self–organize.

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PRE-GAME: Organizing Teams (5 min)

• Self-organize yourself in groups of 4-8 people and allocate the working space and material

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PRE-GAME: Project Chartering (5 min)

• All teams are building a single product for the same vendor, represented by the Product Owner.

• The product is a CITY. • Building blocks are lego / kapla

bricks. • I am the main decision maker of

the product – it is my city. • I will be involved in the

development process by being available to answer questions and provide feedback.

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PRE-GAME: Building the Backlog (15 min)

• We want to build: – Small house: one storey building (several) – Big house: two storey building (several) – Shop – School – Church – Hospital – Kindergarten – Bus stop – Intersection (can be drawn) – Park (can be drawn) – River (can be drawn) – Bridge

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PRE-GAME: Estimating (15 min)

• Choose an estimation method, but keep it simple and keep it fast.

– Recently, agile gurus have recommended dropping estimates.

• A possible approach is t-shirt sizing: S, M, L, XL

• Or you may use story points: 1 2 3 5 8 13

• Or planning poker

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GAME: Sprint Planning (10 min + 3 min)

• Build a unique Planning board for all teams to make sprint planning more visible: – 3 sprint zones for each team

– Release Burndown chart

• You have 3 minutes to plan sprint #1

• Sprint duration: 7 min

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GAME: Sprinting (7 min / sprint)

• 7min ticking… www.online-stopwatch.com

• Start building

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GAME: Reviewing (5 min)

• Stop building

• Demo: where is the demo of my city?

• Update planning wall

• Update Release Burndown chart

• Retrospective: “how can we make it better the next sprint?”

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GAME: release cycle

• Loop on sprints #2 and #3

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POST-GAME: Debriefing

• How did it feel being on a Scrum team?

• How did the short iterations go?

• How accurate were the estimations?

• What would we have done differently from the beginning, if we had another chance to play the

game?

• What was the job of the Product Owner?

• How did it feel after the first sprint when most items required re-work?

• How will your strategy change, if you know the Product Owner is unavailable during sprints?

• How did inter-team communication go? Were there any dependencies? How were they resolved?

• What did you learn?

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Thank you for playing

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References:

• www.lego4scrum.com

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Preparation for this workshop

• Gather material:

– Flipboard pages

– Markers of different colours

– Sticky notes

– Whiteboard

– For each team, 1 set of lego/kapla

• Prepare sticky notes with buildings

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