Agile games night

Global Business Services, GBS

Agile Games Night

Copenhagen
2013, April 4th


Søren Weiss Finn Leander
Agile Coach Agile Coach
IBM Danske Bank

2 Agile Games Night


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person, som du normalt
ikke ville have skabt
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 Tip: 90% af ansvaret for
enhver relation ligger hos
dig selv.

3 Agile Games Night


Agenda
17:00 - 17:15 • Agenda

17:15 - 17:30 • Agile games

17:30 - 17:45 • Kanban

17:45 - 20:45 • Kanban Software Game (inkl. pause)

20:45 - 21:00 • Wrap up

4 Agile Games Night


Ideen med Agile Games Night
 “Legestue” for ligesindede nysgerrige agilister
 Skabe netværk i DK
 Ønsker selv at lære flere spil at kende
 Løbende arrangementer
 Input til blog

5 Agile Games Night


Udsagn om agile games

6 Agile Games Night


Eksempler på spil

7 Agile Games Night


Agile Framework

Agile is a conceptual framework for undertaking software engineering projects
Dynamic
Extreme
Systems
Programming Unified Process SCRUM
Development
(XP)
Method (DSDM)

Feature Driven Kanban
Crystal Adaptive
Development (Coming this
spring/summer)
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Kanban origin
 Kanban is a Japanese word that means
“visual card” or “signal card”.
 Used in production systems to reduce
stock and ensure flow.
 The kanbans tie together the production
system at Toyota.

Agile Games Night
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What is Kanban in software development?
 From “Lean thinking” and
“Theory of contraints” models
David Anderson evolved
“kanban system for software
development”, 2001-2004
 Focus on flow rather than
utilisation of resources
 In software we can think of the
kanban card as a ”virtual work
permit”
 Simple with few rules
 More tool than methodology

Agile Games Night


Kanban practices

Measurement Continuous
Visualise Limit Work In Explicit
and Manage collaborative
Work Progress Policies
Flow improvement

11 Agile Games Night


Visualise Work flow
1. Analyse existing work flow (doing states + waiting states)
2. Represent work flow on board (columns and rows)
3. Break down work into manageable pieces
4. Write each work item on a card
5. Put on the wall

Backlog Task Ready for Development Ready for Production Done
description dev prod QA

Flow of work

Agile Games Night


Limit Work-In-Progress

1. Decide the amount of concurrent work.
2. Assign WIP limits to 1) columns, 2) rows, 3) resources.
3. Continuosly strive to reducing the WIP limits.

(2) (1) (3) (3) (3)

Flow of work



Make process policies explicit

1. Decide on your process rules
2. Document your process rules
3. Visualise your process rules
(2) (1) (3) (3) (3)

Flow of work



Measure and Manage Flow

1. Focus on flow and not utilisation
2. Measure to provide facts. Use facts to decide on improvements.

(2) (1) (3) (3) (3)

Flow of work



Continuous collaborative improvement

1. Improve flow
2. Fast feedback on process deficiencies
3. Visibility and measurement enables improvement
(2) (1) (3) (3) (3)

Flow of work



Kanban - benefits of Kanban?
• Bottlenecks become clearly visible in real-time. This leads people to
collaborate to optimize the whole value chain rather than just their part.

• Provides a more gradual evolution path from waterfall to agile software
development, thereby helping companies that previously have been unable or
unwilling to try agile methods.

• Provides a way to do agile software development without necessarily
having to use time-boxed fixed-commitment iterations such as Scrum
sprints. Useful for situations where sprints don’t make much sense, such as
operations and support teams with a high rate of uncertainty and variability.

•Tends to naturally spread
throughout the organization to other
departments such as HR and sales,
thereby increasing visibility of
everything that is going on at the
company.
17


One day in kanban land - 1

From: ”Lean from the trenches” by H. Kniberg



One day in kanban land - 2

From: ”Lean from the trenches” by H. Kniberg


The Kanban Software Game
Backlog Planned Analysis Development Test Deploy Done

Doing Done Doing Done Doing Done

Based on Software development Kanban © 2009-2010 Christina Skaskiw


The goal of the
game is to deliver
the highest
amount of
business value!



Kanban board layout
Blue Orange Green Purple

Backlog Planned Analysis Development Test Deploy Done

Doing Done Doing Done Doing Done

Policy: Policy: Policy:
Planned Analysis Done round
Assign round is round is and score
standard cards filled filled field is filled
and fixed date
cards to the
backlog



Story types
Regular story (white cards): Flow measurements
4 rounds (cycle time = 3) = 100% business value Lead time = Completed – Planned
5 rounds (cycle time = 4) = 75 % business value
Cycle time = Completed – Started
Notice
> 7 rounds (cycle time >6) = 0 business value
Minimum number of rounds to
Fixed date story (yellow cards): complete a story is 4
• Must complete before or on a deadline (round 1 + round 2 + round 3 + round 4).

• Only value when delivered on time When you calculate cycle time,
• Lead and cycle time is irrelevant for gaining business value you will get the cycle time of 3
cycles (round 4 – round 1).
Expedite story (red cards):
• Must complete in 4 rounds
• Can break WIP limits
• Only value when on time
• Must be done even if no value



Dice and flow
1. Daily meeting (start of each round) decides
– Placement of dice
– What to work on

2. When rolling dice you roll for one column at a time.

3. Dice can be moved from (home) column to another column. Dice score is reduced to half the score if
dice is moved from home column to another column. Hence a dice roll of value 1 or 2 = value 1, a
value 3 or 4 = value 2 and value 5 or 6 = value 3.

4. When counting dice score, count each dice by themselves. Do not add all dices together and then
divide, it will give the wrong result when many dices are moved.

5. Unused dice score is lost.

6. In one round you can only work a story in one column (state). Hence a story cannot be worked on in
several columns in the same round.

7. Place stories at the bottom of the a column if team decides not to complete it (e.g. if the team thinks
that it is not possible to gain business value). This is not possible for expedite stories.



Measurements

 Lead time
– is calculated as = Done round – Planned round
 Cycle time
– is calculated as = Done round – Analysis round
 Accumulated Earned Business value
– is calculated based on cycle time.
 Cumulative flow diagram
– Is calculated by counting number of story cards per state.



Self organising

 Before starting the game consider how to
– decide the priority of the backlog / planned work
– do the daily meetings
– do retrospective meeting



1.
Do a daily coordination
Round flow meeting to decide on strategy

2.
7. Move stories from backlog into
Update measurement chart planned to decide what is
queued to work on

6. 3.
Update story card values and Update board (moving stories)
move story cards to reflect status on progress

4.
5.
Redistribute dice to decide on
Roll dice to produce progress
ressource allocation



User story examples

Story #1
Business value: 40
Planned in round: Started in round: Completed in round: Score:

Analyse: 10 Develop: 12 Test: 11 Deploy: 4

Fixed date story #1
Deadline round 8 Business value: 42
Planned in round: Started in round: Completed in round: Score:

Analyse: 5 Develop: 13 Test: 7 Deploy: 4



1.

Round 1 Decide on strategy and select 5
stories and assign to planned. Fill
out ”planned in round” field on each
card.

2.
5. Move X cards from planned to
”Analysis -> Doing” state. Fill out
Update measurements
”started in round” field on these
cards.

4. 3.
Roll dice and assign dice to stories Prioritise cards in ”Analysis -> Doing
in priority order ” state



Kanban adoption strategy tips

 Start with what you do now
 Agree to pursue incremental,
evolutionary change
 Respect the current proces, roles,
responsibilites and titles

Adopt as you go!



Lessons learned

 Continue doing
 Stop doing
 Start doing



Remember to connect!

Søren Weiss Finn Leander
dk.linkedin.com/in/sorenweiss dk.linkedin.com/pub/finn-leander/0/775/725
twitter.com/sorenweiss


Agile games night

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