Agile Complexification Inverter

Oh the irony of a Pig and Chicken paradigm. If you know of the Scrum parable of the pig and chicken.  Then you may find this story humorous.   I'm working with a group trying to teach them just enough Scrum to form a project team.  Trying to facilitate just enough team formation to allow them to self organize.  We planed a 3 day workshop, to be immediately followed by sprint one.  It went well.  Although some troubling patterns were apparent, we summoned up the courage to keep moving forward. Fast forward to Sprint Two's planning session.  Only three of the seven team members were at the planning session, one had to leave for an hour during the session.  The product owner did not appear, the scrum master had a higher priority meeting.  Summing more courage to venture into the unknown the 3 team members and the two coaches (we pair coach teams) ventured into the unknown. We discussed the obvious impediment in the room.  Created a working mitigation plan for the missing pr

I had a wonderful Christmas.  My nephews got me addicted to the Dragonvale game.  A land where one breeds dragons of various types - did you know, dragons are very hybidizable (I'm sure that's not a standard dictionary word). Dragonvale - iOS simulation game. To build up to a high enough level to purchase a breeding cave one must build treat farms, dragon habits and grow crops.  For this there is an internal game monetary market.  The prices of these goods are set by the game designers (I'm assuming it is not a true " free market ").  The game does not have a sane and balanced market pricing system. The objective of any game designer is to get you to play and have fun.  That is objective number one - design in the fun-factor (see MIT Technology Review 's Exploiting the Fun Factor ).  A secondary objective is to build a game where people will spend money - real cash in exchange for virtual goods.  This is one technique for the game company to make money