Learn & Practice DevOps through Marshmallow Challenge.

1. DevOps Game Marshmallow
Challenge
Murughan Palaniachari

2. Who am I?
Murughan Palaniachari
Release Manager & Heading DevOps @
Euromonitor
Website/Blog
https://elevate-org.com/
LinkedIn
https://in.linkedin.com/in/murughan
Twitter
@Murughan_P

3. Books influenced me towards DevOps Movement

4. Source: https://elevate-org.com/2016/12/14/top-10-devops-values/

5. What is DevOps by Gurus?
DevOps is not a goal, but a never-ending process of Continual
Improvement.
Gene Kim’s 3 ways of DevOps
1. The principles of Flow
2. The Principles of Feedback
3. The Principles of Continues Learning and experimentation
Source: http://itrevolution.com/devops-handbook
https://elevate-org.com/2016/11/28/what-is-devops-by-gurus/

6. DevOps Game – Marshmallow Challenge
To build the tallest freestanding tower with Spaghetti
that will support the marshmallow.
Game was introduced by Peter Skillman.
Tom Wujec has conducted this game in 70 work shops, he has conducted with
the bigger group of 800 people.
Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower

7. Marshmallow Challenge – Kinder garden vs Business students
VS

8. Marshmallow Challenge – Winners

9. Marshmallow Challenge - Kinder garden vs Business students

10. Marshmallow Challenge– Kinder garden vs Architects & Engineers

11. Marshmallow Challenge - Architects & Engineers vs CEOs

12. DevOps Game Marshmallow Challenge – Mission & Goal
Product Owner Expectation:
Build the tallest freestanding tower with Spaghetti that will
support the marshmallow.
Supplies for each team
• 20 sticks of dry spaghetti
• one yard of tape
• one marshmallow

13. DevOps Game - Rules
• Build the Tallest Freestanding Structure with just 20 spaghetti.
• The Entire Marshmallow must be on top.
• Each team should have a role of Development, Database, QA,
and Operations.
• 18 min to build tower.
• DevOps principles & practices have to be applied while
building.
• At the end, one representative from each team should talk
about the Principles and Value of DevOps they have applied
while building.
• Evaluation is based on the DevOps Principles applied and
Product delivery.

14. DevOps Game Marshmallow Challenge with team
I have conducted this session @ Prowareness Bangalore through Software Architects meetup, around 90
team members participated and we had 9 teams.

15. DevOps Game Marshmallow Challenge – Sprint work
We had 9 teams started to build tallest tower.

16. DevOps Game Marshmallow Challenge – Done state
By 18 minutes teams have done with their product and getting ready for Retro.

17. DevOps Game Marshmallow Challenge - Retro time & Winner
A representative from each team Demoed quality product and shared the DevOps principles & practices they have
applied while building.
The team who has applied most of the DevOps principles & practices and delivered quality product, they were the
winners!

18. Learnings from game
• We need to be Agile.
• Marshmallow is the “Assumptions” of a project. Assumptions play an important role in
development, assumptions has to be identified and analysed in the early stage of project.
• Everyone follows the same Culture.
• Each team has members of Development, Database, QA, and Operations by this we eliminating
Silo teams.
• Knowledge sharing happens among team members, this will enable Generalized than
Specialized team members.
• Team members from DEV, Database, QA, Operations are involved from the start of Project.
• Everyone is responsible for delivering.
• The team built trust with each other.

19. Learnings from game
• The team is communicating and collaborating at every point of a time.
• Work is visible to everyone, the team has up-to-date information on the status of the
work so that if any WAIT is happening that can be addressed immediately and enable a
fast flow of work from left to right i.e. Business to Customer.
• Valuing feedback as all the different department team members are in one team here,
feedback from QA is being immediately incorporated.
• Reduced Batch size so that small work can be deployed quickly and frequently in order
to decrease the overhead of QA testing at the end, Integration happens at the end and
so on.
• The team is empowered to fail fast and continually learn from success and failure.

20. Thank you
Murughan Palaniachari
Release Manager & Heading DevOps @ Euromonitor
https://elevate-org.com/
https://in.linkedin.com/in/murughan
@Murughan_P
murughan1985@gmail.com