Agile Games And Exercises

How to do Affinity Estimation?

Affinity estimation is just a technique by which story points are assigned to user stories. It’s not an agile methodology. Clients expect estimates and we need to be able to provide them to remain competitive. So, why don’t we do it as best we can? Being practitioners of agile methodologies, we’re already past giving estimates in days and hours, but even story-point estimation can be tricky for all but the most experienced teams. We need a better solution and affinity estimation may be a step in improving software estimation for us all.

TheTastyCupcakes.org Software Kanban Game

This is a game used for introducing Kanban to software teams in Danske Bank. It is based on the Software Development Kanban game by Christina Skaskiw .The game sets up a simple kanban board and have teams of 3-5 players go through several rounds (similar to days) in order to have work flow through the system. The game introduces concepts such as visualization of work, work in process/progress limit, manage flow, basic measurements and retrospective/improvements.

GetKanabn -Online Game Simulation of a Kanban Environment

Nice kanban online simulator - Do you want to really understand Kanban for software development? Do you want to teach it effectively in your organisation or training program? The getKanban Board Game is the quickest, most effective way to teach the principles and mechanics of Kanban.

FLOWer - Kanban Simulation game

Goldilocks and the Three Bears scrum game

'Creating children's book with SCRUM' - Creating a book is not a simple project however applying Agile principles to the process might make it much more easier to manage and give you better results.

An Exercise in Flow: Dice Game

Games are a great way to learn…especially as a team. 

Here is one powerful exercise that can be used to demonstrate several aspects of flow, value and teamwork: The Dice Game with few variations done by experienced professionals each gives a different angle, using a slight deferent scope or parts of the same game.

Enjoy .

Developing deep insight into your Customers with Empathy Map

With Empathy Map, you can Takethe perspective of your customers or business partners , collaborate with your stakeholders or your own internal team — to strategically analyze the desires and needs of those important to your company, and to uncover ways to improve your product or service.

learnning scrum and Product Backlog exercises for teams

Value cards activities

“Working through a values clarification exercise with your clients can be incredibly powerful.  Values help with identifying what goals are worthwhile moving towards and can promote a willingness to accept discomfort when working towards such goals. “ The Values Cards can assist individuals, couples, teams and organisations to explore what is truly important in life, their relationships or work. This exploration can help clarify core values and inspire positive changes.” Here are some activities with value cards.Enjoy.

ESVP retrospective - Getting a mood reading

A crucial element for retrospective success is the attitude and feelings of the participants to the meeting in which they are required to attend. EVSP activity (Explorer-Shopper-Vacationer-Prisoner) is an ice breaker. The purpose of the EVSP activity is to help understand people’s attitudes to the retrospective and though to help focus on the work of the retrospective. Here it is…

 If you want to learn more about agile retrospectives, you can subscribe this program:

https://oikosofy.clickfunnels.com/agile-retrospectives-12-weeks-sefl-study-program

Silent (is golden) Brainstorming

Silent Brainstorming is a powerful approach combines both individual and group brainstorming.  It’s an approach established to encourage all team members to contribute to any brainstorming session. Using silence elevate the brainstorming results even more.  

'Lean Coffee' - Run a lightweight, structured meeting

Are your meetings out of scope? Does your boss sets the agenda and there are urgent issues that everyone else knows the group needs to discuss, but they aren’t front-of-mind for the boss, so they’re not on the agenda?

 Learn how to use Lean Coffee to run a lightweight, structured, agenda-less meeting.  A meeting format where people build an agenda at the beginning of the meeting and talking about the important stuff .

Cover Story Game

Cover Story is an exercise in visioning. The purpose is to think expansively around an ideal future state for the organization.This game is worth playing because it not only encourages people to “think big,” but also actually plants the seeds for a future that perhaps wasn’t possible before the game was played.

The Business Value Game

"Agile teams want to deliver maximum business value. That’s easy if the Onsite Customer assigns business value to each story. But how does the Customer do that? How can you estimate business value?

How do you decide between stories? How do you decide between projects? How do you decide between clients?

This game gives you some simple business value estimation techniques that are “good enough” for everyday use."

Team Coaching Games

Great teamwork makes things happen more than anything else in organizations.  People work most effectively when interacting with others they know and trust. Team coaching/ Building games enable people to build trust and rapport, which can lead to better outcomes. Team coaching games are versatile and can be used in a variety of situations and  also provide a wonderful opportunity to bring to life awareness and interest to organizations issues. 

Here are some tips and techniques of games, exercises and how to perform them with your tem. Enjoy!

Team Estimation Games

"The Team Estimation Game is the best technique we have found to get a scrum team up-and-running with useful estimates. It plays like a game, but it accomplishes valuable work: assigning story point estimates to user stories. Teams using this technique are typically able to estimate 20 to 60 stories in an hour. The game was invented by our friend and colleague, Steve Bockman."

Backlog Game -The Backlog is in the Eye of the Beholder

It's all about organizing based different stakeholder perspectives.  Organization and prioritization are two distinct activities that can be used to improve the quality of a product backlog. A simple linear list is difficult to prioritize. As well, many stakeholders are forgotten in the rush to deliver customer value.  The purpose of this game is to expand the view of multiple stakeholders as well as illuminate the value of organizing the work without prioritizing.

Affinity Diagram

The Affinity Diagram tool is used to consolidate a large amount of information into groupings or clusters of ideas that have a natural 'affinity', i.e., that have a common thread running through them. It can be used very effectively to organize the ideas extracted from a Brainstorming exercise where people from diverse and unrelated departments might come together to solve a complex problem. (https://www.moresteam.com/toolbox/affinity-diagram.cfm)

Exploratory Testing In Practice

Practical examples, games and techniques of using exploratory testing