Devops for Growth

I was introduced to this technique by Xavier Quesada Allue who told me he learned it from Tobias Mayer. A reference to this can also be found in Jean Tabaka’s book: Collaboration Explained (p207) entitled “Pass The Cards”

Timing:

10-15 minutes

Materials:

A minimum of 8 people, and an even number of people

Anything that you want to prioritise, written on separate cards

One card and one pen per person

Instructions:

This exercise only works with an even number of people and has a total of seven rounds

Give everybody a card with a Product Backlog item on it and a pen

In each round everyone finds someone to pair up with and they discuss the two cards they have in front of them:

As a pair, you have 5 points that can be allocated between the two cards based on the relative importance of the two cards
No half numbers are allowed so the points must be split 5:0 or 4:1 or 3:2
It is not about each person trying to convince the other that their card is more important than their partners card
The two people must agree on the scoring split
Once the scoring split has been agreed, the pair swap cards with each other and hold their hands up to indicate they have finished the round
Once everyone has finished with the round, the facilitator indicates the start of the next round where different pairings will take place, repeating the above process
A total of seven rounds are run and then the total of the 7 scores on the card are totalled up.
The cards are then laid out in order with the highest scoring cards at one end and the lower scoring cards at the other

Learning Points:

It is easier to prioritise when only comparing two items
It is a quick way to prioritise
It is a democratic, inclusive process
If you have stakeholders who are attached to lobbying for one particular feature, this literally requires them to give it away to someone else

L’état d’esprit ludique peut permettre de faire sauter certains verrous et la manipulation concrète de concepts, que ce soit sous forme de simulation ou d’analogie, est une aide puissante à l’assimilation de théories complexes.

Ce procédé a donc tout naturellement quitté les bancs de l’école pour envahir les entreprises, et ce quel que soit leur domaine d’activité.

La notion de penser hors du cadre strict du travail (« outside the box » diraient les anglo-saxons) pour obtenir de meilleurs résultats ou tout du moins des résultats différents, ne se limite pas au domaine de l’apprentissage, mais se généralise à de nombreux types d’activités, le but étant de favoriser la communication et de faire émerger des idées nouvelles.

L’un des fondamentaux de l’Agilité étant les interactions entre les individus, il n’est pas étonnant que le phénomène ludique rencontre un grand succès auprès des agilistes. Petit tour d’horizon des pratiques ludiques dans l’univers Agile.

Note : les jeux sont par ordre alphabétique pour les retrouver plus facilement.

Pour créer une fiche jeu, ajouter une ligne au tableau, et créer ensuite une page en vous appuyant sur le modèle de fiche jeu.

Dependency Poker is an agile learning game about release planning. It is a simulation of multi-team planning and coordination at the program/product-line level, over the 5 sprints of a release cycle, with interdependencies — indeed, with some very nasty, very realistic interdependencies.

The game is played by 4 teams, each with a unique persona and a unique “superpower”, i.e. a technique that only they can use to help resolve impediments confronting them.

Work is represented by feature and story cards which highlight the dependencies between these units of work. The objective of the game is to deliver the most feature value for the program/product-line by the end of the release cycle.

This highly-interactive game gives players hands-on experience in the basic principles of release planning, dependency management, and operation of a Scrum-of-Scrums.

To succeed, teams must address a number of common conflicts including: sequencing of work, unplanned work from other teams, local (our team) versus global (our product) optimization of value, managing work-in-progress, while leaving enough time for integration testing. To survive, teams must employ fast-paced decision-making to discover and resolve dependencies and make sprint plans for the next sprint.

This real-life simulation drives home the understanding that there is no time for big-analysis-up-front and that little unpleasant surprises lurk (seemingly) around every corner.

A simple, interactive, and collaborative game to experience at a high-level the ceremonies and common practices of Scrum through simulating a sprint.

This game has been used as one part of a longer session focused on learning about Scrum. Prior to playing this game, the team has read the Scrum Guide, been given an overview of Scrum methodology, and has been exposed through various other activities to the Scrum roles and Scrum ceremonies. This game is used to experiment with how to put what they’ve learned into practice!

Timing: 30 – 45 minutes

There are a lot of games and exercises that you can run yourself with your team/organization. Here’s a list of some of our favorites.

The Fearless Journey game
highlights your Team’s hard-to-reach Goal and inspires new strategies to reach it.
(new: check out Fearless Solitaire, too)

Players write cards listing Obstacles outside their control, situations that stop them from reaching their Big Goal

Then together they discover and combine Influence Strategies to resolve obstacles respectfully & boldly

Download it here today, and use it for FREE (but don’t modify it!) under a CreativeCommons 2.0 license

Get inspired: follow up the game with your own Action Planning activity
to turn some fictional solutions
into concrete next steps!

Un jeu pour découvrir la méthdoe agile eXtreme Programming.