My Sweet 16 Birthday Party
Introduction
This workshop is loosely based upon the MTV series "My Super Sweet 16" from 2005-8 and is intended to provide the attendees with some hands on user story creation, categorisation, estimation and release planning experience with the use of a simple scenario around planning a large 16th birthday party.
The exercise involves concept centres providing basic information for table groups to complete a series of tasks. The session facilitator is expected to setup the environment, supervise the groups and provide clarification or assistance when necessary.
During the course of the session, the attendees should learn through doing in a practical exercise.
Learning Objectives
- To be able to create new Product Backlog Items and form a meaningful Product Backlog in the form of a story map
- To order the items in a meaningful way
- To be able to estimate items
- To form a basic release plan
Timings
Allow for 90 minutes for table groups to successfully complete their tasks
Materials
- Each attendee should have a printed copies of:
- My Sweet 16 Birthday Party Worksheet
- Concept centres setup around the room:
- My Sweet 16 Birthday Party Posters
- Anatomy of a User Story with small index cards and assorted coloured pens
- Affinity Estimation Poster with packs of Planning Poker cards
- Planning Poker Poster with packs of Planning Poker cards
- Ouija Board Sizing Poster with packs of Planning Poker cards
- Kano Analysis Poster with sticky dots
- MVP Poster with post-it notes and sticky stars
- Buy a Feature Poster with poker chips
- Story Mapping Poster with large index cards
- Post-it notes
- Sharpies
Workshop Flow
Connections
Ask the attendees to arrange themselves into table groups of 4-5 In their table groups, ask the attendees to read through the information on the scenario worksheet and begin to work through the tasks If there are no further questions then ask the table groups to come up with areas of interest as a 2 minute individual brainstorm When the 2 minutes are up, ask the table groups to begin to affinity map their ideas into groups in the centre of the table
Concepts And Concrete Practice
Each table group should follow the tasks on the worksheet to: Brainstorm some initial ideas Form a user journey as an outcome from a guest's or birthday girl's perspective Complete a backbone and ribs of a story map to form the tasks to be done to achieve the user experience Estimate the items using either Planning Poker, Affinity Estimation or Ouija Board sizing techniques (teams choose which technique they would like to use.) Categorise and order the story map based upon value based techniques using either Buy a Feature, MVP or Kana Analysis (teams choose which technique they would like to use.) Arrange the items into a release plan with 5 Sprints based upon the estimate sizing and perceived value
Conclusions
At the conclusion of the exercise ask the table groups to provide a market place to share and explain which techniques they had used along with their observations during the exercise.
References
- http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/planning-poker, accessed 2014
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model, accessed 2014
- User Story Mapping Quick Reference Guide, 2014