Learning and Teaching with Agile Games

Trainers: Gino Marckx and Michael Sahota

"Learning by doing" is what makes games an effective training tool. This workshop builds on the same principle. We will play a variety of games to teach Agile and Lean practices so that participants can learn through playing. People new to Agile will learn concepts in a deep way through the games. Experienced practitioners or coaches will get new insights playing the games and learn how to use them for their own training.

Participants will choose the exact list of games that will be played and taught using Buy A Feature from Innovation Games®.

What’s with the grid?

  • People – games about people learning individual skills or learning about individuals
  • System - games about the team or organization
  • Concepts - games primarily about teaching concepts or ideas
  • “Experiencing our reality” - games the help us understand ourselves and our context

Links – People/Concepts

Links – System/Concept

  • The Biggest Bang for the Buck – backlog organization and prioritization – (60 min). Game Michael Sahota created with Gino Marckx, will be released around Agile2010.
  • The Backlog is in the Eye of the Beholder – organizing backlog from stakeholder view (40 min). Game Michael Sahota co-created at Deep Agile.
  • Quadrants of Effectiveness – classification and prioritization of tasks – (90 min). Game Gino Marckx created and has presented at several conferences.
  • Business Value Game – helps understand differing sources of value. (90 min)
  • Marshmallow Challenge – understand benefits of incremental design (45 min)
  • XPGame – Scrum variant – basics of iterative development and acceptance testing (180 min)
  • Penny Game – Flow of value, process improvement (40 min?)
  • Bottleneck Game – understanding process and applying theory of constraints (90 min)
  • Name Game – Limit concurrent projects (10 min)
  • Movers and shapers – team dynamics (10 min)

Links – System/Reality

  • Ball Point Game – process improvement, teamwork – simpler than penny game (40 min)
  • Value Stream Mapping – hmmm. not a game really
  • Leadership Game – self-organization and leadership styles (180 min)

Links – People/Reality

Gino Marckx

In 2002, Gino started working with some of Belgium's most prominent Agile promoters. Very soon after that, he joined the Belgian XP/Agile User Group and became actively involved in promoting Agile techniques and practices, because he believes in their effectiveness. As a consultant he has shifted his practice to coaching individuals and organizations as they embrace Agile. Gino strongly relies on his passion for team dynamics, his experience in leadership positions, and his technical expertise. Gino is co-organizer of XPDays Benelux, and is actively involved as a participant and speaker in a number of Agile user groups in Belgium and Canada. He likes to spend his spare time with family and friends enjoying cycling, travel, art, music, poetry and bragging about the supreme quality of Belgian beer.

Michael Sahota

Michael has 15 years experience in software development and 10 years of proven leadership skills including leadership roles such as V.P., Director and team lead. Over the last 9 years, Michael has been helping companies adopt Agile and Lean practices.

Michael became a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) in 2004 and is huge advocate of better (XP) engineering practices since discovering unit testing in 2001. He is a fan of Lean practices such as A3, Value Stream Mapping, and Kanban. Michael has a B.A.Sc. from University of Toronto in Engineering Science and a M.Sc. from U.B.C. in Computer Science.

Michael lives and works in Toronto as an independent Agile and Lean coach, consultant and trainer at Agilitrix.

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