SearchIn July of 2016, our Project Management Office at eimagine created Agile Games: a monthly user group in Indianapolis centered around agile, leadership, and team dynamics. Our meetings are on the last Wednesday of each month. If you are in the Indianapolis area, I would encourage you to attend! During our monthly meetup, we play a game centered around Agile and/or Leadership concepts. Every activity we host is interactive, collaborative, informative and fun.
The response to our games has been overwhelmingly positive, and just three months after starting our meetup, we presented at Indiana’s largest project management conference: Professional Development Day (PDD) through PMICIC. At PDD 2016, we played a game called “99 Test Balloons,” a complete description of the activity can be found here: http://tastycupcakes.org/2009/06/99-test-balloons/. Since this is a relatively well known game in the Agile community, we called the game “Face the Customer,” for the purposes of the conference.
The flow of the game is as follows:
1. Participants work in teams to craft balloons with a face.
2. The facilitator (Product Owner) does not offer acceptance criteria without being prompted by teams.
3. Over time, teams adapt to the Product Owner’s communication style and began to ask “the right questions.”
4. By the end of the activity, most teams are able to create a template to utilize when crafting their balloon faces.
During “Face the Customer” at PDD 2016, participants experienced complex processes and Agile concepts with a minimal time investment (60 minutes). These concepts were imparted through game participation and group discussion. As with our monthly meetup, we also provided everyone that attended a handout detailing the core learning objectives, as well as, how to conduct this activity as their own organization.
Our PMO will continue to host our monthly meetup, Agile Games in 2017 and we hope you can join us! You can sign up for our next meetup on Wednesday January 25th at http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Games. If you mention this blog, you will receive two entries to our monthly giveaway.
Have a great idea for an Agile Game? Leave your comments below!
