Communication chaos under looming deadlines - sound familiar? We'll level up our teamwork, practice rapid learning, and identify ways to calm the chaos and focus on getting to done, all using Spaceteam, a chaotic and collaborative card/phone game.
You'll work with your teammates to repair a failing spaceship before it falls into a black hole. in order to escape, you'll communicate problems, request help, assist colleagues and respond to constant change -- all in five minutes!
You'll learn from your failures, improve as a team, and gain insights into what helps organizations and teams collaborate effectively and achieve flow.
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Buy or download for FREE!
Buy physical cards: from https://www.playspaceteam.com/store or Amazon
Download: lookup and download Spaceteam on Google Play or iOS AppStore
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Begin
Introduce the students to the rules of the game with the following video. They’re going to figure out how to play by playing the game, not a lot of research and effort has to be done up front.
Each run of the game lasts five minutes, and features shouting, changing seats, unheard requests for help, and usually, implosion in a black hole.
After five minutes, initiate retrospective round.
Ask: "How was this like your daily work?" Give 60 seconds to pair share followed by four minutes for table discussion.
Then ask: "Knowing what you know now, what will you do differently?" Another 60 second pair share and four minutes table discussion, which is never enough, but it's enough for them to share some ideas and try again.
Then play another five-minute round. More shouting, some victory, generally teams having a growing sense how to work together.
Now retro again. This is the last meaty section, ask for success stories:
Who found a good way to make requests that were listened to?
Who found ways to reduce the number of problems you're working on simultaneously?
Who found a new idea you'd like to implement in your project?
Each person, please write down your Ah Ha!s. How will you share these with your team?
As time permits, teams can choose to play one last five minute game. (There's a strong interest in "winning" the game for closure.)
Take-Aways
Effective communication of tasks and obstacles
Working together to eliminate/reduce WIP
Focus on group effort
Value of retrospectives
Exit Ticket
Turn in your list of three Ah-Ha! items.
https://www.5dvision.com/docs/scrum-workflow/
Students are given a blank scrum workflow chart and a list of terminology and given ten minutes to label the chart correctly. Most important instruction is to understand that there are three types of terms to be filled in:“Events” (gray boxes on the diagram), “Roles” (two lines), and “Artifacts” (one line)
Instructor reviews the correct answer at the end of the ten minute period and leads discussion about the scrum structure.
Resources: Scrum Guides reading (free download)
https://tools.kaiten.io/featureban/
Kanban principles game that shows advantages of WIP limits/sprint methodology, each player plays from their own computer at the same time
Game is easy to figure out by playing, would not spend a lot of time on explaining how to get started but rather focus on the retrospective and lessons from the simulation.
Facilitator’s Guide (link)
Guide is written as if instructor would be the facilitator (not recommended for this purpose) but it gives a lot of helpful resources for the reflection phase. Students are capable of initiating and facilitating their own game given instructions for parameters. The goal is not to become Project Management experts but to see what happens to project progress by limiting how many stories are completed at one time, WIP controls/sprints.
Each group of 3-5 should pick a scrum leader to initiate the game from their browser. The only additional responsibility for being scrum leader is setting up the correct parameters in the game, acting as the “facilitator.” Once everyone is in the game the rules will be presented on screen. Students shouldn’t spend more than a few minutes scrolling through them because there are only two options each round, red card or black card and their tasks for each result appears on screen each round. Scrum leader will now start the iteration.
Once initiated the scrum leader should now click on “+ Add 5 Cards” at the top of the Queue to make 13 total tasks available in the queue. Scrum leader ends the iteration when all cards are in the Done column.
At the end of the iteration each student will answer three questions that appear on screen. Have them read the questions and then set a two minute timer for a think pair share, then give three minutes to individually and quickly answer the questions.
Scrum leader starts second iteration, now the game sets WIP limits in the Doing and Testing columns. Scrum leader should add the same number of tasks that they started with in the first round (13 tasks). Iteration ends when all tasks are Done.
Again the program will ask three questions similar to the ones answered before, 1 min share pair, 4 min quick response. Student should focus on getting the idea down for discussion after the activity, bullet points and not a full thesis at this point.
Facilitator will now commence the third iteration, fill the queue with 13 tasks, and the team will run the simulation.
After all three iterations are completed the software will provide analysis comparing the iterations to show if improvements and progress were made. Some groups may have only slight improvements, often times due to lucky card draws and better strategizing through turn management even when the cards seem unfavorable. But most often the first round should have work piling up in the doing column with not much progress happening. The second round should show some gains in moving work through to done, typically shaving off a day or two, and then the third iteration with some practice under their belts should show at least marginal gains over the second iteration as well.
Deliverable: at the end of the simulation the game progresses to a Game Overview screen where the participants can choose to print their results. You can decide if you want all pages but the most important ones should be the first few iteration summary pages where it also shows their responses to the reflection/retrospective between iterations. For the third iteration have them add three takeaway bullet points for the entire exercise after group reflection and a brief class discussion about their experiences and results
Individual (homework?) or team practice for project management and work flow prioritization
If organized as a group activity it may be useful to have team roles such as a scrum master (the one that controls the screen), a marketing/efficiency analyst (the one that calculates the benefit per work unit as new tasks are added to the queue), etc.
https://www.agile42.com/en/kanban-pizza-game/
o Iterations involve creating a crude Kanban board
o Follow instructions as provided via the link
The idea here is to see how a simple task can be broken down into its components and WIP arranged and organized based on progress through the development phases. The idea of changing requirements and flexibility is introduced by adding new pizza recipes mid-iteration/sprint.