A continuous flow of small chunks of value is more efficient than batching
Examining your process can improve your performance
Prioritising your work by value (i.e. flipping the high value coins first) means more value is delivered in the same time
10-15 minutes
Plastic coins of multiple values, divided into identical sets. Each set should contain coins that have different values. You should know approximately the value of the each set (£XX).
Watch / phone / egg timer (for timing rounds)
Optional - Post-its / index cards / flipchart paper (for recording data)
Optional - A pen (for recording data)
1. Split the group into teams of 4-6 people (more will also work)
Get each team to nominate a product owner.
Give each team a set of coins.
2. Explain the rules for ROUND ONE.
Everyone who isn’t a product owner is on a development team.
You have 1 minute to get value to your product owner by flipping coins.
The work on one coin is done when everyone in the team has flipped it and it has been passed to the product owner.
You can't pass the coins to the next person in your team until you've flipped every single one.
Help: You can accept innovations, such as stacking all the coins and flipping them in batches), if offered, but you absolutely can’t have people passing coins to each other before flipping everyone.
Try and shut down queries about whether the coins need to start heads or tails, etc. It really does not matter. Just get to the flipping.
3. Teams flip coins.
If you like to ham it up (of course you do), you can ask people who aren’t flipping coins whether they are working hard.
Optional: If it looks like people might finish on time, just say a minute has passed.
4. After the first round, ask each product owner in turn how much value was delivered. It should be none.
5. Run a VERY QUICK retrospective: how could you increase the amount of value you deliver in the time?
If they haven’t before you started, people generally work out at this stage that it would be faster to pass each coin on as soon as it’s flipped.
Actively change the rules to say it is now possible to hand the coins to the next person as soon as you have them.
If anyone suggests prioritisation of coins, tell them to hold that thought.
6. ROUND TWO. Run another 1-minute round.
Ideally all value is delivered during this time.
7. Ask product owners how much value they got this time. (Ideally don’t allow them to count it - just say: you should have £XX if you got everything.)
8. Facilitator points out that in the second round of one minute, the teams managed to managed to deliver £XX, rather than £0.
This was only possible by changing delivery methods.
9. Facilitator asks teams - if you had a much shorter time frame, how would you ensure that you delivered the highest value.
Answer - prioritisation.
10. ROUND THREE. Run a third, 15 second round.
11. Explain learnings.