Continuous Play: The Future of Agile (presented at Agile Gravy Conference 2014, St. Louis).

1. CONTINUOUS PLAY
@mattphilip
#AGSTL14
T h e F u t u r e o f A g i l e

2. WHAT IF WORK WERE
MORE LIKE A GAME?

3. WHAT’S NEXT FOR AGILE ?
1998 CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION
2004 CONTINUOUS DESIGN
2010 CONTINUOUS DELIVERY
2014 CONTINUOUS PLAY

4. CONTINUOUS PLAY
=
GAMIFIED WORK
Gamification is integrating game thinking and design into activities to increase
engagement, learning and fun.
4

5. WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

6. SO WHAT IS THIS TALK ABOUT (AND NOT ABOUT)?
Using games solely
for training or
planning (a.k.a.
serious games)
Marketing
and loyalty
programs
Experience
report
Applying game
thinking to daily
work
Gamification as a
way to build in
continual, reflective
improvement
Discussing how
agile teams have a
head start
Missions of
our own!
Gamified
services (e.g.,
Foursquare)

7. CREATE A
CHARACTER
1. Get together in small groups
2. Make sure you have people from multiple guilds (a.k.a. organizations)

8. CREATE A CHARACTER
• Player name (your name)
• Character name (made up)
• Class (Ruby Warrior, Kanban
Wizard, etc.)
• Level (agile experience)
• Guild (organization, team)
• Spells and special skills (org-
change magic, analysis spell, ninja
coding)

9. WHY GAMIFY?
PERSONAL
GOALS
ORGANIZATIONAL
GOALS

10. DEFINING TRAITS OF A GAME

11. REEVES AND REED’S 10 INGREDIENTS FOR GAMES
1. Self-representation
with avatars
2. 3D environments
3. Narrative context
4. Feedback
5. Reputation, Ranks and
Levels
6. Marketplace and
economics
7. Competition under
explicit, enforced rules
8. Teams
9. Parallel, reconfigurable
communication
systems
10. Time pressure

12. AGILE IS THE KEY INTERSECTION
WORK AGILE
PLAY

13. WORK-PLAY
MIRROR
1. Pair up within your guild
2. On a piece of paper, make a table with two columns: Work and Play
3. List as many of your experiences that are common to both

14. A DIFFERENT KIND OF “FLOW”

15. CSIKSZENTMIHALYI’S 9 FEATURES OF FLOW
1. Clear goals at every step
2. Immediate feedback
3. Balance between challenge and skill
4. Merger of action and awareness
5. Exclusion of distractions
6. No worries about failure
7. Absence of self-consciousness
8. Time becomes distorted
9. The experience is an end in itself

16. FLOW AND AGILE
Flow Steps
Clear goals
Measure progress of goals
Concentrate on task and keep
making finer distinctions in
challenges
Develop skills to meet
challenge
Agile Practices
Value
Features, Stories
Running tested features
Cycle time
Refactor mercilessly,
incrementally develop, test-
drive development
Pair, practice katas

17. INTRINSIC REWARDS
Satisfying work
Experience (or at least the hope) of success
Social connection
Meaning/Purpose

18. CREATE A
FLOW EXPERIENCE
1. Pick a simple, mundane task that you don’t experience flow with today and
plot it on the flow diagram.
2. How might you gamify it to create a flow experience?

19. HOW AGILE IS
LIKE A GAME

20. VOLUNTARY, PARTICIPATORY SUCCESS
• Voluntary
discipline
• Self-organizing
teams
• Teams built
around motivated
individuals
• Collaborative
improvement

21. QUEST-LIKE WORK
• Stories
• Narratives
• Spikes
As a team memberI want to gamify our work
So that I can feel like I’mnot even working

22. VISIBLE PROGRESS AND RULES
• TDD
• WIP limits, explicit
policies
• Continuous-integration
build monitors
• Card wall

23. FEEDBACK
• Customer
• Team
• System
• Process

24. INTENSIFY THE
FEEDBACK
1. Quickly list as many forms of feedback as possible that you get on your
team.
2. Brainstorm ways to intensify those feedback moments.

25. HIGH LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION
Realtime, face-to-face communication
Pairing to solve problems

26. GAME DIMENSIONS
• Get to the other side (Complete the iteration,
feature)
• Visit all the map (Unlock “secrets” by technical
discovery)
• Time limits (Velocity metrics, iteration time
box)
• Finite or infinite (“iteration-less” development)
• Competitive or cooperative

27. CREATING
CONTINUOUS PLAY

28. SOMETHING BIGGER THAN OURSELVES
What is the organization
about and where do
we fit in?
The “Why” of work
(Sinek’s “golden circle”)
Epic context for action

29. WHAT’S YOUR
STORY?
1. Decide what kind of game narrative suits your work.
2. Elaborate on that narrative.

30. KNOW YOUR PLAYERS

31. PROJECT INCEPTION
Team members create
characters, identify what they’ll
need
Game designer works with
customer to create narrative
Customer helps map out quests,
assigns virtual monetary value
Designer and customer
determine what it means to
win, rules, virtual currency and
rewards

32. PROJECT INITIATION (ITERATION 0)
Team members mini-
quest for their
equipment
Game designer tells the
team the narrative
Team sets goals for first
missions
Guild leadership

33. DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY
Gamify small components
to address pain points
Hackathons and secret
missions to destroy bug
“bosses”
Use retrospectives, Toyota
kata to “mod” the game
Measure the impact
Monitor flow experience

34. VISUALIZE PROGRESS
Story
mapping>
quest maps
Pairing charts
> character
profiles
Build in clear
rewards

35. LEVELING UP AS SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Flow experience
supported by
sustainable pace
Reflect recognition and
reputation
Encourage team
members to view their
job as self
improvement

36. SOFTWARE CRAFTSMANSHIP
Craftsmanship over crap
(Uncle Bob)
Apprentice >
Journeyman > Master
Kvell and naches
emotions
(mentoring pride)

37. ENDGAME

38. DANGERS
You can’t just spawn a
new project after failing
Could depersonalize
rather than personalize
No one game can please
all
Gaming and misuse of
metrics

39. HOW DO WE CONQUER THIS NEW QUEST?
Use agile and lean principles
Intrinsic then extrinsic
Voluntary participation
Give autonomy to teams
Lightweight (i.e., fun)

40. FINAL “BOSS”
1. List three things blocking you from gamifying.
2. With a pair, come up with a possible solution for them.

41. BEFORE YOUR NEXT QUEST
BOOKS
Flow
A Theory of Fun
Total Engagement
Reality Is Broken
Gamestorming
Designing Virtual Worlds
WEB
alistair.cockburn.us
delicious.com/matthew.philip/
gamification
smilingfinney.blogspot.com
codingconduct.cc

42. GG
mphilip@thoughtworks.com
@mattphilip