Ron Beurskens and I have been working on a new serious game to visualize what makes teams flourish in agile organisations.
Developing the game was interesting. Ron and I had long discussions and many trial runs. The two pilots we organised lead to drastic redesign of the game set-up. This week we ran the workshop successfully. Yes! We are still working on further adjustments, but the participants liked it, learned new stuff, and had fun. We can’t wait to host is again.
In the Teams Unfolded game we use simple construction assignments to make teams discover the importance of skills and expertise. Participants experience the impact they have on their flow, their output, and the solutions they implement. We’ll expose some antipatterns and discuss how we can eliminate them. Finally we recognize that local optimizations may hinder the value flow and we wonder if a fixed team structure is the only working solution.
The workshop is designed for people who are working in teams, challenge existing teams on their composition (For example: Scrum masters, Agile coaches, Project leaders, team managers) and those involved in skills and knowledge development (Chapter leads, Guild-leads, HR). If you are interested in unfolding your team, this game might be just for you!
Yesterday we piloted the new DevOpsImprovement game.
Many DevOps teams (and that includes the PO) are struggling with balancing between Development work, operational tasks and improvements. Depending on the organisational context and the team members, there often is a focus on one of the three types of work. In the Dev, Ops & Improvement game teams experience the benefit of improving your way of working and balancing between short term and long-term benefits. In the game teams experience that often the way to being proactive and innovative is by reducing the time spent on operational task by sufficient improvements like automation, CI/CD and developing team skills. The goal of this interactive card game is to have a maximum of business value in a sustainable way without ignoring operational responsibilities and creating technical dept.
During the agile guild meeting at Valori we held the first trial run. We made some improvements and will present the game at the NN Agile day, later this month. The participants were enthusiastic: ” it gives examples on how certain improvements can benefit the organisation”, “the events are really recognisable, we have them as well”, “it triggers discussion between teams” and “since it can be done in an hour, I can easily do it during retrospective or e.g. at a lunch session”.
The castle in Groningen, venue of NoorderTest 2014
Historically I doubt whether the Castle in Groningen was ever under siege. This month however a serious battle will take place at the venue.
Next week, on Thursday 9th the NNOT (1) organizes the 7th edition of the NoorderTEST. During this conference the Castle will host a fine series of lectures by e.g. Rudi Niemeijer, Leo van der Aalst, Eric van der Meulen. See the full program
Highlight of the day is the SCRUM Battle. Together with Egbert Bouman I will lead our teams into the world of SCRUM. If you want to experience how to work in agile teams, this your chance. I previously wrote about this game simulation on this blog: SCRUM Battle, Fun way to experience agile in which an enthusiastic participant writes:
“The success of the SCRUM battle wasn’t only because of the enthusiasm shown by the participants, but also thanks to the incredibly engaging Scrum Masters. They made learning this Scrum-technique fun and entertaining to do. I doubt there was anyone present that evening that did not learn something new that evening.”
If you want to join us in the battle, feel free. You can leave your traditional armor at home, might want to bring your laptop and smartphone. Those are the tools for the modern quality fighter 😉
Begin September we gave the SCRUM Battle at Quby. Quby is a dynamic organization with the ambition to enable people to get grip on their energy consumption. They do so by developing products and services that are smart, easy and relevant. Toon the smart thermostat is one of their best-known products. It can be found in many households.
During one evening circa thirty employees were trained to cooperate in an Agile environment. Quby’s own newsletter describes the experience as follows:
“Even though the tasks themselves were nothing more than making pictures of your group members, or searching the internet for pictures of snakes and puffins, the real learning experience was learning to work together to complete these tasks as fast as possible.”
During this simulation game, the four teams tried to deliver as much business value as possible. Along the way they gained understanding of the success factors of SCRUM and they also experienced some of its pitfalls.
“The success of the evening wasn’t only because of the enthusiasm shown by the participants, but also thanks to the incredibly engaging Scrummasters, Marcel Schaar and Derk-Jan de Grood. They made learning this Scrum-technique fun and entertaining to do. I doubt there was anyone present that evening that did not learn something new that evening.
Since the SCRUM battle is a battle, only one team wins. But the other teams do not go home empty handed. As Cynthia Hoekstra explains in the news letter:
”In the end, we discovered that we didn’t learn the most of doing everything right, but by doing it wrong. Failing forward, as Derk-Jan has said himself.”
Derk-Jan de Grood 