Let’s play an agile game!
Tomorrow will be the next Agile Cville meeting at OpenSpace in Charlottesville, from 6-8pm. The topic this month is “Agile Failure Patterns”, and I agreed to kick off the discussion. Rather than start off the meeting with power point, I think we’ll try a game instead to get the discussion going.
I have in mind a very simple game card game, which I encourage you to give me feedback on. I’ll suggest these rules (modified by any ideas you provide me) for the first round, and then encourage the group at the meeting to reflect and revise the rules for a second round. Or if it’s not working and conversation is going fine without the game, we’ll just drop it. Either way it will serve it’s main purpose as a conversation starter!
Draft rules for round one
- Each person gets a set of “failure pattern” cards, with a quick title of a failure pattern. Any detailed description to explain the pattern will have to be supplied (or made up) by the person playing the card.
- Each person also gets a set of “remedy” cards, with a quick title of an agile practice on it.
- Each person also gets “wild cards” which are basically blank, and they can use to add in their own failure patterns or remedies on the fly.
- The person to left of the dealer starts. They play any of their “failure pattern” cards, and describe the failure pattern. Ideally they also describe a real world situation they have seen related to that failure pattern.
- Play continues to the left, and each person plays a “remedy” card, and describes a way to combat that failure pattern.
- If a player feels that the current “failure pattern” has been adequately addressed, or they just want to change the topic, they play another of their “failure pattern” cards.
- Discussion is encouraged throughout. If the discussion is really good, I suspect we’ll have people attempting to play “remedy” cards out of turn, and we’ll just go with the flow and see how it works. Perhaps there should be betting chips too?
What do you think of this game? What failure patterns do you propose I put on the cards? What remedies? Please either post your suggestions to this blog post or on twitter to @ArinSime.
Sponsors: Your name could be here!
Also, I should mention that AgileCville is looking for sponsors for this month’s event. If you agree today to buy us pizza (about $60), then I’ll put your company’s logo on all the playing cards when I make them tonight, and I’ll also make sure to promote your company on my blog, tweets about the event, and at the event itself. Just email me at Arin@AgilityFeat.com or message me on Twitter @ArinSime to sponsor us!
See you Tuesday!
Finally, if you’re in the Charlottesville Virginia area tomorrow, please stop by AgileCville! The meeting is from 6-8 PM on Tuesday April 19th, at OpenSpace (455 Second Street SE, Suite 100, Charlottesville, VA 22902)
