Scrum (XP) Game

Introduction

This workshop is intended to provide a very quick practical demonstration of using Scrum to complete various tasks within 5 sprints over a period of 1.5 hours.

The game comprises of user stories that have instructions for teams of attendees to perform and a range of items such as playing cards, balloons, coins, dice and lengths of string to use to complete the user stories.

Teams are pitched in competition with each other to deliver the highest business value possible within the fixed time constraints.

Learning Objectives

The attendees for this training course are expected to leave with having acquired the following learning objectives:

• To understand what the Scrum framework is an how it can be used in a practical way
• To understand how business vales can be accrued
• To understand constraints such as skills or equipment availability
• To understand the importance of “Done”

Timings

This workshop has the following timings:

• Initial introduction and information to attendees - 10 mins
• Formation of initial product backlog and sprint backlog - 5 mins
• 5 x (sprints of 1 min + 10 mins for sprint review + 2 mins for sprint retro + 2 mins for sprint planning) - 75 mins
• Debrief session - 15 mins

Materials

• Story Cards
• Customer Value Chart to capture value metrics
• Velocity Chart to capture velocity metrics
• 2 x coins per table group
• 5 x dice per table group
• 2 x string (20cm and 60cm) per table group
• 1 x pack of playing cards per table group
• 1 x packs of balloons per table group (large helium ready balloons are best)
• Big timer that is highly visible

Setup

• cafe style seating for small table groups of 4-6 people
• Only the white user story cards are available in the centre of the room
• The green, yellow and red user story cards and withheld by the facilitator until needed
• Timer is highly visible, (e.g. timer app displayed via a projector)

Workshop Flow

Connections

Connections part of the activity are intended to enable the attendees to connect with the subject and with each other, and should have more context than “ice breakers” that would otherwise not have any relevance to the subject or context of the workshop.

Activities	Description
Team Organisation	Ask the attendees to organise themselves into teams of four - this begins their self organising behaviour
Workshop setup	Ask the teams to setup their work spaces with enough space to move around, and to acquire 2 x coins, 5 x dice, 1 x pack of playing cards, 2 x lengths of string (20cm and 60cm) and a handful of balloons

Concepts & Concrete Practice

For a majority of the activities, they will include introducing new concepts and ideas to attendees, and also provide interactive opportunities to practice them and apply the new found knowledge.

Activities	Description
Scrum Framework Diagram	Show a quick diagram of the Scrum framework and briefly remind the attendees of the ceremonies and artefacts
Create The Product Backlog	Ask the teams to arrange the white user story cards in order of the business value, i.e. the blue numbers with the highest at the top and smallest at the bottom on the table at their work space. The red numbers on the user story cards should also be referenced as indicators of how much effort is involved, which may or may not factor into their ordering of the backlog
Sprint Planning 1	Ask the teams to select from the product backlog the items that they think that they can complete within a 1 minute sprint and place these to the side to form their sprint backlog
Sprint 1	Start the timer and announce that the first sprint has started. The teams should start to frantically complete the user stories in a flurry of activity.
Sprint Review 1	At the end of the sprint sound a loud buzzer or similar to signify the end of the sprint and ask the teams to stop working. Then ask which team wants to go first and evaluate their tasks with respect to the user story acceptance criteria's a Product Owner would, accepting good work and rejecting deficient work. Collect the team metrics with velocity calculated from the total of red numbers on the user stories that were completed, and the delivered business value as the total of the blue numbers.
Sprint Retrospective 1	Ask the teams to talk amongst themselves about what worked well and what they would like to change for 2 minutes.
Sprint Planning 2	Ask the teams to order the product backlog again and give each team a set of green user story cards this time to factor into their backlog. The product backlog should now comprise of unfinished white and greed user story cards. This brings in the concept of adaptability into the project.
Rinse and Repeat	Continue as previous with the next sprints adding in the yellow cards for sprint planning 3 and the red cards for sprint planning 4, with no additional cards added for sprint planning 5

Conclusions

Conclusion activities enable the attendees to take stock of what they have learnt and how these new ideas can be applied in practice to real world projects.

Activities	Description
Class Debrief	Finish off the exercise with a quick debrief with all of the attendees to discuss what were their observations, how did the Scrum framework help them to complete the tasks, how did they manage the work, how did they handle diverse work etc. etc.