This month, MARISSA FOGAL facilitated AGILE PESTS – a game inspired by another AGTC meetup a few months back. Thanks to Marissa for sharing this creation with us!
Agile teams frequently experience anti-patterns that creep in; whether they are in the form of a process or a behavior, they can be annoying and distracting. Today we played Agile Pests, a simple and quick game that provided a spotlight to Agile Principles. In this game, 12 Agile Pests hid behind doors. Each pest exhibited a behavior that could impede a team’s progress. Pests were revealed (one at a time) and brought into the battle arena. Participants studied the 12 Agile Principles and determined which ones they would use to defeat the Agile Pest.
As each pest was exposed, there was great conversation around which principle could be used and why. We also examined if we encounter the pests in our current environment. There were great ideas shared on how this game could be facilitated via workshops or as intros to a Scrum event. Other participants shared ideas on versions of the game that could make it more challenging such as narrowing the principles down to the top 2 or creating scenarios where the pest fights back after the first principle is thrown at him (which principle would you use next?). One the benefits of this game is bringing the Agile Principles to the foreground. We often learn about the principles in Agile Mindset workshops but they are tend to be set aside and forgotten about. Agile Pests provides teams an opportunity to review the principles and anti-patterns in their current environment.
This game is simple to use and easy to play. It can be played all at once or broken up into multiple sessions. Here is a board you may use to set up this game for your team. This board may be read only; feel free to save a copy to your personal Miro account and modify the board as you see fit.
Access the board: MIRO
Additional resources were shared in the chat:
https://modernagile.org
https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/what-should-we-measure/
You can find out more about Marissa here: