Value is one of the key metrics that we often look at when working Agile and Lean. Value is often called “Outcome”, and is defined by what is valuable to the customer and to our business at any given moment. Working Agile enables us to get quick feedback and adopt our plan after learnings. This enables us to always maximize value.
The impact on value is enabled by:
Short feedback loops
Flexibility in planning
To try out different types of strategies for delivery and planning we have decided play the Battleship Game. Find one or more friends to play with, and let’s get started!
This experience based exercise is designed to help participants understand the value of continuous rebuild to avoid creating technical- or user experience debt.
At Dandy People we use a lot of Experience Based Games, so called Serious Games, and Simulations to enable quick learnings. We have created many different ones that you can find within this category (same as this post) here on our blog.
This specific game that we present here is created to enable critical understanding of the value of continous rebuild to not build technical, and other, debt. Debt does not only exists within code, but also within the user experience, therefore the parts of the customer experience also often need to be continously updated as new parts are added.
When transitioning to more agile, customer-focused ways of working, aiming to reduce lead times and increase customer and business value—commonly referred to as a product-led organization.
The game consists of two rounds and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete, excluding time for reflection and theoretical discussion.
The image above shows the team playing the game. The team self-organizes how they want to approach the task. In the first round, they play based on the principle “What’s done is done”—but in the second round, they are allowed to continuously adjust the order of the piles. This simulates continuously improving what has already been done, such as code or design.
Preparation
Print the cards with the numbers and cut them out.
Use slightly thicker paper for easier handling, but avoid making it too thick.
Each team needs:
One deck of cards.
One game board.
Creating the Game Board
Use thick marker lines to draw an area where the cards can be placed.
Label the center with “Game Board.”
Ensure the board is large enough to fit 5 cards wide and 2 cards tall. Avoid making it larger, as it will make the game too easy.
This is the rules page for the Dandy People agile board game, Agile WoW the Game, in proper board game format. This page will always be updated with the latest rules.
Introduction
Join an agile team and work and learn together to complete the work you’ve committed to!
Setup the game
Place the board in the middle of the table
Sort the Daily Events in two piles, one for Week I and one for Week II
Shuffle each pile separately
Place one Daily Event upside down on each corresponding spot on the board
Place all Story cards face up in numerical order in the Sprint Backlog column
Place all Task cards face up for each story in the To Do column
Place one Continuous Improvement card face up on each spot on the board
Place all grey Work unit cubes in their area on the board
Place all red/blue/yellow/purple Skill cubes in their area on the board
Hand out all Player boards and the corresponding Team member token to the players. Players can have multiple player boards or share player boards depending on the number of players
Objective
Work together to get all tasks from To do to Done using continuous improvements and knowledge sharing wisely to tackle hurdles in your way. Because just like in reality. Things will happen along the way 🙂
Overview
The game is played over 10 rounds, each round a day of work. Each round starts with a daily event affecting the team. Then all players simultaneously decide whether to work on a task, knowledge sharing, or continuous improvements.
How to play
Each round has 5 steps:
1. Daily event
Flip the next daily event hexagon. Follow the instructions on the back. The effect is only for the current day unless stated otherwise.
Tip! If the event results in someone not being able to work this round, put that player token on the event during that round to not forget.
2. Get to work
For each team member: Decide what to work on and put your team member token there (discussion encouraged!) You have 4 options.
A. Work on a task in the Doing column. Move a Task from To Do to Doing if needed.
You must work from left to right on the task.
You must have the skill of the next available box on the task.
B. Learn from an expert by putting your token under an expert working (the player with the color of the skill is the expert). In this case, only one day’s work will be achieved, not two. This is due to learning.
C. Review a task in the Review column. You don’t need any specific skill to review a Task and it always take one day for one team member to review a task.
D. Work on continuous improvements by putting your team member token on a continuous improvement. When the Continuous improvement is completed its effect is active from the next turn. You are now a more efficient team. Congratulations!
3. Resolve the day’s work
For each Team member, do one of the following:
Did you work to complete a box on a task? Put a grey cube in the box
Did you work together with someone? Put a skill cube of the skill you learned on your player board
Did you review a task? Move it to Done
Did you work on a continuous improvement? Put a grey cube in the next white box on it. If you have filled the last box the continuous improvement rules are active from the next turn on
4. Go home for some well-earned rest
Move your Team member token to your player board.
Move all finished Tasks in To do (ie it has work unit cubes in all boxes) to Review
5. Start the next day
Repeat until you have played 10 rounds. Good luck!
How did we do?
Take 5 minutes to do this retrospective exercise together in your gaming team.
What went well during the sprint? How can you do more of that?
What did not go so well during the sprint? How can you improve on that?
What did you learn?
Still have questions?
Let us know in the comments below and we’ll update the instructions!
We work together at Dandy to create and adapt trainings for our customers’ needs. We often sit together to generate ideas. These sessions, like the one we just had, are unbelievably fun. This time, we had read an article that inspired us to create this game. Namely: https://www.creativehackers.co/posts/the-subtle-art-of-fucking-up
Hence the game was called “Biggest Fuck Ups Game” 🙂
När vi på Dandy jobbar med att anpassa utbildningar till våra kunders behov så sitter vi alltid och idégenererar tillsammans. Vi har otroligt roligt under dessa sessioner, precis som vi hade nu. Den här gången hade vi läst en artikel som vi inspirerades mycket från i framtagandet av ett nytt spel vi gjorde igår. Nämligen denna: https://www.creativehackers.co/posts/the-subtle-art-of-fucking-up
Artikeln triggade oss, eftersom vi alla vet hur det känns när vi fuckar upp saker. Vi har alla gjort det! Vi ville göra ett allvarligt ämne som psykologisk trygghet lite kul också. Beroende på miljön vi befinner oss i när vi misslyckas, så får det oss att känna olika saker. Befinner vi oss i en psykologiskt trygg miljö så kan vi lära oss av det. Befinner vi oss i en otrygg miljö så blir instinkten att hitta någon att skylla på eller försöka gömma sig på något sätt, i vart fall så uteblir lärandet. Miljön är alltså avgörande och genom den kan “Backward law” träda in, vilket innebär att rädslan för att misslyckas blir en självuppfyllande profetia, och hur bra blir vi då på våra jobb?
Det här är ett känsligt och ett viktigt ämne för många organisationer. Grunden för om folk presterar bra på jobbet eller inte, ligger i om man har psykologiskt trygghet på jobbet eller inte, och det saknas i många av dagens organisationer. Många TROR att de har psykologisk trygghet, men det visar sig när man börjar mäta att den inte är så hög, och är det någon mätning där det INTE bara duger att ligga ok i en mätning så är det i den här. Det får stora konsekvenser för organisationen i avsaknad av motivation, lärande, självförtroende, innovation, trygg konfliktlösning, och antal ständiga förbättringar som görs har forskning visat.
Vad är psykologisk trygghet?
Vad är då psykologiskt trygghet? Det är när man kan prata om misstag man gjort utan att bli dömd, utan att känna att någon tittar snett på en, för om du inte vill se inkompetent eller negativ ut i en otrygg miljö så låter du ofta bli att dela idéer du har, du ställer inte frågor, du berättar inte för någon om dina svagheter, visar inte dina misstag, du gör så lite som möjligt faktiskt, för då kan du inte göra något fel. Psykologisk trygghet handlar inte om att ha det mysigt och gott där alla har konsensus, tvärtom, det handlar om att höja din röst och ta diskussioner där du ser andra saker, även om det är obekvämt och jobbigt. Eller föreställ dig bara skillnaden att komma till ett jobb där folk förutsätter att du kan ditt jobb, jämfört med att folk kräver att du ska bevisa din kunskap hela tiden. Hur lätt är det då att känna sig psykologiskt trygg?
Not many people like being lectured. Not all people like being coached either. But everybody (yes, everybody!) likes games in one form or another. That’s why we’ve created an experienced-based free online game that teaches the basics of an agile way of working.
You can play it yourself or with up to four people, taking the part of a team member in an agile team working on a number of stories in a sprint.
The game introduces:
The look and purpose of a scrum board
How T-shaping improves your chances of succeeding
Why continuous improvements is a good thing in the long run
It’s free and we’ve made an instruction video on how you set it up (because it’s frankly a bit trickier than it should be)
2. Get someone to play with
After creating a “room” you can send an invite code to other players who can join in (they need to create an account as well). Want a video on how to do that? Here you go!
3. Know the rules
Want to know the rules? Then, we’ve got you covered! The rules are available in the game but we made this how-to video just in case:
You can also take the role of a facilitator and play the game to train new agile teams about the basics or let it be the start of a discussion in a more mature team.
After finishing playing, run a retrospective. Follow up the usual “What could have we have done better?” and “What did we do well?” with “How does this compare with real life?” and “Do you work together like this in your teams?” and let the discussions flow.
Playing with people on the same team gets you comparisons to real life (and quite often “why don’t we work more together?”). People from different teams quickly get into comparing ways of working and exchanging ideas. All great stuff, and if you don’t have time to finish the game know that you’ve already won!
In order to create an experienced-based game, we have taken the liberty to simplify some things and we might not follow all the rules of Scrum. But if you are looking for the Scrum Guide you find the 2020 version here.
In the same way as Aesop’s Fables from Ancient Greece talked about serious matters but transferred them into the world of animals, this game lets all participants play in a friendly environment where nobody is in their ordinary job role. Instead the whole team is challenged to draw randomly selected wild animals well enough so the “customer” can guess what animal is is. The challenge can only be overcome through learning about- and improving how the team is organized and how it works. Two to three hours of laughter, serious learning and quite silly-looking animals can be expected.
The game has been used in one of the largest companies in Sweden to give hundreds of employees a “hands-on” feel for the difference between resource optimization and flow optimization. Especially counter-intuitive ideas need to be experienced to really win acceptance and nothing beats having done it yourself. It also clearly illustrates the value of small rapid improvements in a complex situation (like when working with flow) where you can’t analyze your way to the perfect solution. Sometimes groups of more senior participants try to discuss for a long time before playing another 5-min round. This results in fewer rounds being played, less reality feedback being generated, a slower learning cycle and a lower final score. The team that has the global high-score in the game is a group of junior engineers who could decide rapidly what to try next, play more rounds and thus learn quicker what ACTUALLY worked best. A healthy atmosphere of wanting to change many things compared to the original (and really bad) delivery process was certainly to their advantage too. (more…)
Time: 20 – 30 min
This simulation needs a group of at least 8-10 people, or better 20 people, and a big space where they can spread out and move around to give impact. The simulation isn’t time based, it doesn’t matter how long it takes the group so no stress is put on them, it is purely tasked based.
Give the instruction:“place your self so that you stand in the order of hight”.
This is usually easily done. Sometimes you can observe that someone acts as a project manager, telling people where to move.
Ask the question to the group: How difficult on a scale 1-10 was this?
Approximate point of discussion
It was easy, you could easily make quick decisions on where to stand just by looking. You didn’t need to do any research or create a strategy. It was easy to act. If they had a PM you can talk about that and if it was ok to act as an PM in this project. (more…)
Cross functional teams are complete in expertise but not necessarily collaborative. Sometimes team members hold on to their expertise too much and the team does not perform to its potential. This Lego game illuminates the difference when members allow themselves to take on tasks outside their expertise, being so called T-shaped. Play the game to kick-start your change and create collaboration.
I dag har jag varit på UX Open tillsammans med ca 300 andra UXare. Vi har diskuterat och delat med oss av erfarenheter. Det har varit givande och roligt.
Kul häng på UX open 🙂
Den här posten handlar om den workshop som jag och Anette Lovas från Expressen höll med 30 nyfikna personer. Vi gjorde två olika övningar som bygger på metodiken upplevelsebaserat lärande, och syftet var att skapa en förståelse för varför vi behöver arbeta Agilt och med Lean UX. Vi gör övningar för att simulera en situation och möjliggöra en upplevelse som vi sedan diskuterar ikring. Dessa två övningar var Sommarängen, och en övning som vi kallar “Simple, Complicated and Complex”. Här beskriver jag hur dessa övningar fungerar och varför du ska göra dom. Gör det gärna med kunder, utvecklingsteam, ledningsgrupper och chefer, på utbildningar, möten eller workshops. Jag har lånat övningarna av mina Crispkollegor som har kommit på dom. (more…)
Target Group:Alla som arbetar med HR och personalfrågor - HR-chefer, HR business partners, HR-specialister, linjechefer, verksamhetschefer, konsultchefer.
In the same way as 
