Agile Complexification Inverter

Presented in OpenSpace at Agile Games 2018 for FUN and Feedback. This game design is not focused where you might assume - at training people how to "do" Scrum.  The inventors of the game, Tim Snyder and Derek Lane, are focused upon the experience of Scrumming, the group dynamics of being a scrum team.  The game has been designed, and is being refined with the objective of allowing groups of people that know how to do Scrum, to experience some of the Ah-HA moments that mature Scrum team learn after many, laborious retrospectives.  By compressing the group dynamic into a game with the glorious "happen-chance" cards causing random, yet all too common software development events, playing this game for a few hours can give you the deep insights that may only be achieved after months or years of real-life time developing products.  Learning doesn't require time... * Al Shalloway. One of the core questions Tim & Derek have been pondering:  How does one gai...

Derek "QuikDraw" Lane & I proposed this session (2 sessions actually) for the Agile2017 conference (it wasn't accepted - oh well next time maybe).  Wonder if you'd like to come play in the OK Corral with us? SlideShare Deck Here's how it might go down...   Agile2017 Submission # 5835 And if you're interested... comment on this slide deck...  it's not the final answer.  In fact we may be sneaking bigger guns in to the corral under our dusters... SlideShare deck Abstract: Leadership Style Shoot Out :: Which style best works for this context - how will you recognize it? Where do you Stand Let's survey the audience's Leadership styles/preferences - we will use a standard reference tool (or maybe just make it up on the fly). Getting the participants up and moving and interacting with each other and the sub-set of leadership styles described on the four flip charts in the corners of the room. We will play a few rounds of the gam...

An Exercise in Estimation:  How many times can you fold a piece of paper in half & half again... I do this exercise when beginning scrum teams start story estimation or task estimation.  While this exercise has a unique twist that is very different than task estimation or story estimation - very few people foresee this aspect of the exercise, so it adds to the ah-ha moment. Start by giving everyone a sheet of typical paper (8.5 x 11 in the USA - although the size just doesn't matter).  Then tell them the exercise but ask that no one do any thing yet.  First we will estimate.  The task is to estimate how many times you could fold the paper in half and then again in half and repeat... without doing it what's your estimate of the number of folds? Ask people to call out their estimate, write then on a board in no particular order or fashion. Typical groups come up with estimate in the range of 5 - 20 folds. If you want to do math... calcula...

Is your "Agile Project Manager" driving the team to increase their velocity?  Has the Agile Death March begun? Fred Brooks warned us of these dangers nearly 25 years ago in The Mythical Man-Month . One antidote to the PM schedule crunching technique of throwing warm bodies at the problem is to remove the impediments that are known (or just under the surface) within the structure and environment that holds the team back from performing at more efficient delivery rates.  So many times the line workers (developers and testers) are well aware of these issues, and feel as if they have raised them many times and gotten little attention (mostly negative attention) from managers.  A classic game (Innovation Game) to expose these impediments is Speed Boa t. I just saw this image of the anvil holding the balloon down and thought it would make a great visual metaphor for the Speed Boat game .  See the article by Alan Dayley  Velocity is Like a Helium Balloon  ...

Practicing Into to Refactoring with LEGOs . Refactoring is when a developer changes the structure of the code without changing the behavior.  To do this with little or no risk a craftsman will have a set of well maintained tests that prove the code still behaves exactly as before. A simple way to visualize refactoring is to think of 12 eggs.  Most people will imagine a carton of eggs.  But it is possible to think of 2 cartons of 6 eggs; or even 6 packages of two hardboiled eggs.  Refactoring get's its name from the factorization of numbers.  Twelve has multiple factors (6 x 2), (3 x 4), (2 x 6), (1 x 12).  No matter which factorization the resulting collection is twelve eggs.  In TDD we have test to make sure we don't break the eggs. Note:  Many IDE's claim to do refactoring, and many times they work just as expected; however not all IDE refactorings are reliable.  I suggest you test your IDE's refactoring before you trust it. To int...

Agile Games 2012 conference in Cambridge. " The Marshmallow Challenge is a remarkably fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity." David presenting the challenge at Agile Games conference. Watch Tom Wujec's TED.com talk about his many experiences with this exercise.   Agile Games 2013 ! See Also:   Results Oriented Web conference Marshmallow Challenge workshop Don't mistake the Marshmallow Challenge with the Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel.  One is a design challenge - the other is an experiment designed to see if personality traits such as self-control are malleable. Cephalopods Have Passed a Cognitive Test Designed For Human Children Cuttlefish were given a new version of the marshmallow test, and the results may demonstrate that there's more going on in their strange little brains than we knew.

Pictures from a recent Product Owner Scrum Immersion workshop. Agenda for Scrum Immersion workshop Here are some Panoramas of the simulated sprints (also see photosynths ). what do you want to get out of a Scrum adoption by the team? Scrum Immersion simulation roadmap What we learned at the Global Sales Conference Clients - Wish list (that's not a backlog) Management "launches" a new team Project plan - simulation of 2 product releases What is Agile Release Planning Release Planning - a simulation Product Backlog (has Size & ranked for business value delivery) Sprint Planning (the What & the How) Sprint 1 - Bootstrap team's capacity to forecast unknown velocity A schematic of a 5 min. Simulated Sprint 15 sec. for a simulated Stand-up meeting The prime directive - DO IT! 5 min. for Simulation Sprint review meetings 2 sprints then Release 1 - demo with Cu...