During an update of our courses at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, I was told that we would no longer be teaching about planning poker in Scrum projects. Apparently, measuring velocity was no longer part of the orthodoxy. I found this puzzling, as I had taken the rituals of estimating and measuring velocity to be part of the core processes of Scrum. Had I misunderstood the framework, or were there other forces at play?
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I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Myriam Hadnes for her podcast Workshops Work. From the initial question “What can video game design teach us about workshop design?” we ventured into education, codesign, Agile, facilitation and even existentialism. That was so much fun to do!
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Un projet en ligne, en autogouvernance avec des inconnus sans frontières, c’est possible ? Bien sûr, et ça marche même très bien ! C’est en tout cas notre expérience avec la traduction en 1 an des 133 vidéos de Frédéric Laloux. Un beau projet que Guillaume Jouquet et moi-même avons souhaité documenter dans ce retour d’expérience, où vous pourrez découvrir le dessous des cartes et notre interprétation des principes de Reinventing Organization.
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The Agile philosophy is not only applicable to IT projects. It makes sense in any collaboration context, because it is just a better way of working. My recent experience of Agile with primary school teachers has shown me that the approach truly can be used everywhere and that it will quickly be of benefit to the team that uses it.
No matter how engaging an experience is, or how much effort you put in designing cool rules and goals: If someone feels forced to engage in an activity, they will find it utterly boring. In this fourth and final part, we are addressing the last aspect of what makes a game fun: Voluntary participation. How does this notion apply to Scrum?
Feedback is a decisive aspect of human interactions. Be it in education, games, management, design or in interpersonal relationships, the way we communicate to people if they have met our expectations can have a strong impact on their future behaviours. Well-designed feedback loops are thus crucial for crafted experiences, and one of the main reasons behind the success of Scrum as a method.
After looking at the goal (part 1) and at the rules (part 2), we are continuing the exploration of the fun in Scrum with the third trait defining a game: The feedback system.
In the past few years I had the opportunity to explore various uses and dimensions of Scrum. On projects working with Scrum and the Agile philosophy, I always felt more energized, accomplished and enthusiastic. The atmosphere in my team was better, we were more productive, engaged, and overall we experienced much less stress. To put it simply: Working on projects with Scrum was fun. I started to ask myself why it was so much better to run a project with Scrum than without.
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