Agile Game Factory develops agile serious games with a particular attention to game mechanics to create fun and motivating players to enjoy the session. We want to use the game to deliver strong concepts on typical agile topics.
In this facilitation guide we are not considering game mechanic and dynamic, but we are focusing on the topics the game helps to explore.
It is important to remember The Agile Mind is available also as a pure virtual experience.
What is described here for the card game is perfectly adaptable to the virtual experience (see the last chapter in this page for specific notes)
Material available
In the original package available in DriveThruCard, you can find everything to play the game and some tips to prepare material for a full experience with a Print & Play game. For all details you can refer to the guides available in the package.
Keep in mind that in the package also the material for the introduction workshop is available (guide is here). In theory you could design the game specific for your team, with your own set of Values, Principle and Practices. However this is out of scope of this guide.
I was reported that material has been used also outside the play experience, during a retrospective or maybe to identify improvements in the way of working.
The starting point
As agile team for sure you have heard “Agile is not a framework, it is a mindset.” But what is a mindset? How can we make it flourish in our people? These are the critical questions we want to bring to live with this game.
In the agile mind we talk about
- Values, Principles, Practices and Tools and Agile onion
- Fixed and growth mindset but also
- DO, THINK and BE agile
- Objectives and adaptability
- …
They are all there, somewhere in the cards, but above all in how to interact with the cards, every turn and round.
The six influencers
The essence of the game is that “teams can leverage six influencers to improve their level of agile mindset” and that “leveraging a practice is very different, for example, from leveraging a value”. So influencers play a critical role in the game, and maybe they can have a critical role in team dynamics.
Influencers are organised in 2 main groups:
Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, directly coming from Daniel Pink book (DRIVE) are the “internal” influencers that move individuals to achieve they best results. However when moving as a team there are other “external” influencers because out of the individuals: Collaboration Environment and Leadership.
External and Internal influencers are related and this relation has been implemented in the graphic (another interesting article will be the story of these icons)
Internal influencers are “basic” geometric figures; external ones instead are composite figures and in particular they are built taking the related basic image and duplicated (with a particular modification) to show these are adding a new dimension. Also the color is relevant: Internal have basic colours (yellow has been “ambered” to make it more visible when printing on plain white paper); external have composite colours, simplifying their chromatic relations
- Collaboration = Autonomy & Mastery
- Leadership = Mastery & Purpose
- Environment = Autonomy & Mastery & Purpose & (Collaboration & Leadership)
An finally we have definitions of the influencers. This has been written in a very specific standard format to provoke a conversation among people to check if there is a common understanding and also a visible implementation for them in team dynamic.
Explore cards of the main deck
Cards in the main deck are the core of the topics covered by the games. These are 108 cards of a similar structure, organised in 3 groups.
Each card has a description that can generate conversation (see below, because this can be different per level) and has a set of INput (left) and OUTput (right) influencers: these on the right can be used a s a bonus to develop other cards.
INput influencers have been assigned on the basis of experience and also considering a balance in the game, but they are there to provoke a conversation on the way to create, in reality, this card in the team: How have we developed the card in out team? How can we develop the card in our team? What are inflorescence we want to leverage to make this happening for real?
An also OUTput influencers have been identified on the basis of the experience but also consistency in the game; anyway does our team agree this card will give as a “bonus” these OUTput influencers?
And finally what about the score? The level of mindset generated by each of the card? Why some cards have no score and some has 8 points? How is the distribution of the scores across the 3 decks?
As we have anticipated cards in each level have description with a different logic.
54 cards are in level one, split between Tools and Practices, and the most common question at this level are: What is the difference between a practice and a tool? Do we agree on the definition printed on the card? Have we developed this card in our team, are we following this same description?
36 cards are principle related to particular frameworks, and each card has a specific principle with the reference to the framework so we can explore the source of this information. Here I have summoned principles coming from the following frameworks:
- Agile Leadership
- Agile Manifesto
- eXtreme Programming
- Kanban
- Kanban core practices
- Lean
- Less
- Scrum
- SAFe
Here definition have been taken from the framework so they are perfect to be discussed within the team to understand the level of adoption and consistency.
Finally we have 18 cards with the values, organised across the six influencers.
In these cards the structure is based on a specific format that explain a belief and why it is effective:
We believe <cause> [because] <effect>
Sprint and Objective cards
Another interesting level of conversation is generated on the cards for sprint and objectives:
What does it mean that if we have a bug in production we cannot develop a new card? And why instead if have a successful release we can develop an extra card?
Why we should have a partial objective to develop 3 of the 5 scrum values? What are the Scrum values? What scrum values are adopted by this team?
Does these cards have some relation with real life for our teams? Different effects?
Experience in virtual
game platform,
break out rooms are needed?
Facilitator access
Introduction workshop