Presented at Agile Bath & Bristol (21st March 2017) If software development is a co-operative game, as Alistair Cockburn observed, then what kind of game is Scrum? Lots of people are playing it — or say they are — but there seems to be some disagreement about what the point of the game is, how to play it and even, in many cases, what the rules are. This talk looks at Scrum and other agile approaches through the lens of nomic games, hypothesis-driven development and fun.

1. Game of Sprints
@KevlinHenney

7. https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/new-york/
articles/10-paces-to-find-street-art-in-nyc/

8. They satirized
the reductive
and banal
nature of
management
speak.
Will Gompertz
Think Like an Artist

10. Scrum works by making visible the
dysfunction and impediments that are
impacting the Product Owner and the team’s
effectiveness, so that they can be addressed.
The Scrum framework will quickly reveal
these weaknesses. Scrum does not solve the
problems of development; it makes them
painfully visible, and provides a framework
for people to explore ways to resolve
problems in short cycles and with small
improvement experiments.
http://scrumprimer.com

11. It has become commonplace to suggest that failure is good for
entrepreneurs. In this view, failure that comes early in a founder's
career can teach them important lessons about doing business
and harden them up for the next start-up attempt.
David Storey
"Lessons that are wasted on entrepreneurs"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb24f8a4-2151-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html

12. In the UK, the evidence is that novices are neither more nor less
likely to have a business that either grows or survives than
experienced founders. In Germany, where much more extensive
statistical work has been undertaken, it is clear that those whose
business had failed had worse-performing businesses if they
restarted than did novices.
David Storey
"Lessons that are wasted on entrepreneurs"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb24f8a4-2151-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html

13. In short, the assumption that entrepreneurs use the lessons of
their own experience to improve their chances of creating a
series of profitable businesses is not borne out by the evidence.
Success in business remains, as in life, something of a lottery.
David Storey
"Lessons that are wasted on entrepreneurs"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb24f8a4-2151-11dd-a0e6-000077b07658.html

14. Man prefers to believe
what he prefers to be true.
Francis Bacon

15. No matter what humans
think about, we tend to
pay more attention to
stuff that fits in with our
beliefs than stuff that
might challenge them.
Psychologists call this
"confirmation bias."
When we have embraced
a theory, large or small,
we tend to be better at
noticing evidence that
supports it than evidence
that might run counter
to it.

16. As any psychologist will tell you, pretty much everything you
think and do is coloured by biases that you are typically totally
unaware of. Rather than seeing the world as it is, you see it
through a veil of prejudice and self-serving hypocrisies.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21028122.200-the-grand-delusion-blind-to-bias.html

17. You have just experienced the illusion of naive realism - the
conviction that you, and perhaps you alone, perceive the world
as it really is, and that anybody who sees it differently is
biased.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21028122.200-the-grand-delusion-blind-to-bias.html

18. If, at this point, you are thinking: "Yeah, right, that might be
true of other people, but not me," then you have fallen foul of
yet another aspect of the illusion: the bias blind spot. Most
people will happily acknowledge that such biases exist, but
only in other people.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg21028122.200-the-grand-delusion-blind-to-bias.html

19. If you want to learn how
to build a house, build a
house. Don't ask anybody,
just build a house.
Christopher Walken

24. empirical, adjective
 based on, concerned with, or verifiable by
observation or experience rather than theory
or pure logic
 pertaining to, or derived from, experience
 capable of being verified or disproved by
observation or experiment
Concise Oxford English Dictionary ∙ Oxford English Dictionary ∙ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary

26. The "defined" process control
model requires that every
piece of work be completely
understood. Given a well-
defined set of inputs, the
same outputs are generated
every time.

27. The empirical process control
model, on the other hand,
expects the unexpected. It
provides and exercises control
through frequent inspection
and adaptation for processes
that are imperfectly defined
and generate unpredictable
and unrepeatable results.

28. Plan
Establish hypothesis,
goal or work tasks
Do
Carry out plan
Study
Review what has
been done against
plan (a.k.a. Check)
Act
Revise approach
or artefacts based
on study
Deming/Shewhart Cycle

29. Starting from a position of incomplete
knowledge and gradually iterating
through hypothesis, experiment and
discovery towards — one would hope
— working software addresses part
of the question of moving from the
unknown to the known.
Kevlin Henney
"The Uncertainty Principle"
NDC Magazine 2009

31. If a plot works out
exactly as you first
planned, you're not
working loosely
enough to give room
to your imagination
and instincts.

32. / WordFriday

33. pantser, noun
 Writer who writes by the seat of their pants.
 In contrast to a plotter, a pantser doesn't
work to (or have) an outline.

34. Plan
Establish hypothesis,
goal or work tasks
Do
Carry out plan
Study
Review what has
been done against
plan (a.k.a. Check)
Act
Revise approach
or artefacts based
on study
Deming/Shewhart Cycle

35. Write
As the behaviour is
new, the test fails
Reify
Implement so that
the test passes
Reflect
Is there something in
the code or tests that
could be improved?
Refactor
Make it so!
Test-First Cycle

36. TDD is fun! It’s like a game where you
navigate a maze of technical decisions that
lead to highly robust software while
avoiding the quagmire of long debug
sessions. With each test there is a renewed
sense of accomplishment and clear progress
toward the goal. Automated tests record
assumptions, capture decisions, and free the
mind to focus on the next challenge.
James Grenning
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C

37. TDD is fun! It’s like a game where you
navigate a maze of technical decisions that
lead to highly robust software while
avoiding the quagmire of long debug
sessions. With each test there is a renewed
sense of accomplishment and clear progress
toward the goal. Automated tests record
assumptions, capture decisions, and free the
mind to focus on the next challenge.
James Grenning
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C

38. TDD is fun! It’s like a game where you
navigate a maze of technical decisions that
lead to highly robust software while
avoiding the quagmire of long debug
sessions. With each test there is a renewed
sense of accomplishment and clear progress
toward the goal. Automated tests record
assumptions, capture decisions, and free the
mind to focus on the next challenge.
James Grenning
Test-Driven Development for Embedded C

39. Rock climbing, story-telling, and carpet
wrestling are not about winning or losing;
the game is all about having fun.
As long as the guessing or the story-telling is
interesting, the game is worth playing.
These are cooperative games.
The point of the game is to interact with each
other, or perhaps to help each other.
Alistair Cockburn
"Software Development as a Cooperative Game"
http://alistair.cockburn.us/Software+development+as+a+cooperative+game

40. / WordFriday

41. nomic, noun & adjective
 a game in which changing the rules of the game is
a legal move and part of the game
 the original Nomic was invented by Peter Suber,
but the term is now generalised to describe any
game that has these properties
 political constitutions, legal systems, software
development processes and many games that
children spontaneously evolve over an afternoon
of play are nomic in nature

42. Software development:
a social activity with
technical practices.
Helen Sharp

43. The four
conditions that
characterize wise
crowds:
diversity of
opinion,
independence,
decentralization,
and aggregation.

44. There’s little correlation between a
group’s collective intelligence and
the IQs of its individual members.
But if a group includes more
women, its collective intelligence
rises.
"What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women"
http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/

45. As a
I want
So that
$Role
$Feature
$Benefit

46. As a
I want
So that
team member
$Feature
$Benefit

47. As a
I want
So that
team member
to develop software
$Benefit

48. As a
I want
So that
team member
to develop software
I can have fun