How agile are you? - Agile New England 2021 - Ben Linders

•

0 likes•716 views

On April 1, 2021, (no joke) I did an Agile 101 for Agile New England where we played the Agile Self-assessment Game online. The Agile Self-assessment Game: How Agile Are You? by Ben Linders The Agile Self-assessment Game is an Agile ” compass & map” to find out where you are and inspire you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. It’s a cooperative card game to discover how agile you are and what you can do to increase your agility to deliver more value to their customers and stakeholders. In this session, Ben Linders explored how a game can enable people to pull in ideas for change and apply those in a way that best suits their collective needs. And we have played with the Agile self-assessment cards online. Ben Linders is an Independent Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality, and Continuous Improvement. As an adviser, trainer, and coach, he helps organizations with effectively deploying software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers. Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean, and Quality, and a well-known speaker and author. Creator of many Agile Coaching Tools, for example, the Agile Self-assessment Game.

Presentations & Public Speaking

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 1
Ben Linders Consulting
The Agile Self-assessment Game:
How Agile are You?
Agile New England, April 1, 2021
Ben Linders

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 2
Ben Linders Consulting
Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / Speaker
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous improvement
Freelance Editor for InfoQ.com
BenLinders.com
Books: Valuable Agile Retrospectives Problem? What Problem?
What Drives Quality Self-assessments Continuous Improvement
Games: Agile Self-assessment Game Retrospectives Bingo Impediments
Quality Coaching Cards Agile Testing Cards

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 3
Ben Linders Consulting

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 4
Ben Linders Consulting
Imposing doesn’t work

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 5
Ben Linders Consulting
Gamification
Applying principles and practices from
gaming in a non-gaming context
 Solving problems/challenges together,
 Share stories, travel journeys
 Progression or emerge structure
Enabling Improvement

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 6
Ben Linders Consulting
What can gamification bring?
 People like to play games
 Encourage and involve people
 Provide different perspectives
 Stimulate collaboration
 Build relationships
 Visualize what’s happening
 Establish safety to fail and learn

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 7
Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Self-assessments
Self-assess to improve
 Discuss & Learn
 Engage & Involve
 Experiment
 Take action
Agile journey
Checklists Game

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 8
Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Self-assessment Game
Started as Agile Coaching Cards
Many game formats/exercises
Expansion Packs for Scrum, DevOps, …
Book: Exercises & Experience Stories
Testing, Quality, Psychological Safety
Kanban
Scrum
Business
DevOps Agile

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 9
Ben Linders Consulting
Playing Suggestions
Playing suggestions:
• Basic Game
• Variants on the Game
• Invest in Agile
• Sailboat Retrospective
• First things First
• Deep Thought
• Best Agile Practice
• Sketching Agile Journey
• Health Check
benlinders.com/game/
Scrum
DevOps
Kanban
Business
Agile

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 10
Ben Linders Consulting
Playing onsite

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 11
Ben Linders Consulting
Online health self-assessment

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 12
Ben Linders Consulting
First Things First

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 13
Ben Linders Consulting
Key Takeaways
 Don't impose change on people, it doesn’t work
 Self-organization implies that teams should assess how
they are doing and take responsibility for improvement
 Gamification provides a safe-to-fail environment where
teams can explore, experiment, and learn
 You can engage and empower people by supporting
them with agile self-assessments

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 14
Ben Linders Consulting
Links
Game - Book & cards benlinders.com/shop/the-agile-self-assessment-game/
Raffle (valid until April 11):
Two free copies of the ebook & cards: Coupon “AgileNewEngland-Free” Gone!
25% discount on the ebook & cards: Coupon “AgileNewEngland-Discount”
Game Information benlinders.com/game/
Agile Coaching Tools benlinders.com/downloads/
Agile Self-assessments benlinders.com/tools/agile-self-assessments/

benlinders.com - @BenLinders 15
Ben Linders Consulting
Questions?
Questions?
Ben Linders
Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / Speaker
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
Feedback: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NV5SSXY
info@BenLinders.com
info@BenLinders.com
@BenLinders
www.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.benlinders.com
www.benlinders.com

What's hot

If your organization wants to become agile and lean, teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively. Playing the Impediment Board Game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they hinder teams, and decide what to do by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. You’ll learn to become more effective by recognizing impediments early and get rid of them before they become a major issue. The impediment game teaches you the five steps for handling impediments effectively: – recognize and analyze impediments – find out how they hinder the team – find effective solutions to deal with them – decide what to do and who can do it – learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments Agile coaches use the Impediment Board Game in agile transformations to coach teams and help them to become self-organized and empowered to solve any impediments that they might face on their agile journey. Come play the impediment board game!

Dealing effectively with impediments - Agile Management Congress 2019 - Ben L...

Ben Linders

The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why and how of agile retrospectives, with much practical tips, stories, and examples. Ben also gives full-day workshops on Valuable Agile Retrospectives.

Spicing up Agile Retrospectives - Agile Practitioners 2016 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

People like working in teams. That is, if there’s a good environment and culture where people can actually work together and feel valued. Then you can have great teams. Creating the right conditions and environment that enables people to work together in teams can be hard work. But it’s important, as collaboration and teamwork are essential to make agile work to deliver value. This talk shows how you can self-assess how your team is performing and provide you with ideas to improve collaboration and teamwork to increase the agility of your team.

Making Team Working Work - Agile by Example 2017 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

It can be hard for agile teams to deal with quality and testing challenges and decide what to do to deliver high-quality products. There are many different approaches and solutions, which, depending on the context, the problem at hand, and how they are applied, can be more or less effective. In this webinar, Ben Linders will show you how can use gamification to self-assess your current way of working and enhance quality and testing in agile teams. Playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards make it possible to explore your current quality and testing practice and reach a consensus on what could be improved. Players can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices. In teams, people can use the cards to share their experiences and learnings. During the webinar, we’ll pick out cards from the coaching decks to go into detail on specific principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively.

Webinar enhancing quality and testing in agile teams - PractiTest - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

Need for Continuous Improvement in Agile - 1stconf Melbourne 2016 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

Back to the Future – A Futurespective on Software Development in 2040 We start the futurespective by sketching the future. How is software developed in 2040? Is it people, AI, or a combination? Teams, large groups, or individual work? Programming and testing, or other approaches? Continuous delivery, chunks, iterations, push or pull? Distributed, dispersed, localized teams? There are no limits, let your imagination flow to visualize ideas about developing software products in 2040. Next, we’ll discuss what got us there. How did these new ways of developing software come into existence? How did we discover them? What experiments led to this? What drove us or influenced us along the way? Finally, we think about the steps that we can take in 2020 to reach the castle in the sky of software development. What can we do now to become better? What should we stop as it won’t exist in the future anymore? Let’s find out how the future of software development looks, by doing a futurespective exercise in groups!

Futurespective on Software Development in 2040 - Agile Tour Brussels 2020 - B...

Ben Linders

Agile retrospectives have become a practice that is used by many teams to inspect and adapt their way of working. They provide insight into the activities performed and show how people are working together to deliver products Did you know that you can also use agile retrospectives to drive improvements in projects and for products? In his keynote, Ben Linders will explain what agile retrospectives are, how you can do them, and how they compare to project evaluations, post-mortems, and lessons-learned sessions. He will explore how you can join agile retrospectives as a project manager or product manager and the business benefits that agile retrospectives can bring.

Driving improvements with Agile Retrospectives - Project and Product Manageme...

Ben Linders

Pecha Kucha How to screw up your agile retrospective big time - Ben Linders -...

Ben Linders

Agile Retrospectives can be used to investigate quality issues or to agree upon actions that can improve the quality of the software that is delivered. They complement testing and provide solutions to learn and build quality in from the start. An agile retrospective is a practice for teams to reflect, learn, and to continuously become better in what they do. They focus on the process to help teams to improve products and deliver more value.

Talk improving software quality with retrospectives - TestCon Moscow 2019 - ...

Ben Linders

Adopting agile often doesn’t go as smoothly as expected in an organization. The road to agility can be hard to travel: You can’t plan your journey up front and there will be surprises along the way. Becoming agile is a learning process which requires that you reflect regularly and adopt your way of working, finding better ways to travel. Ben Linders will explore what teams, agile coaches, Scrum masters, and managers can do to be prepared for a journey to agility, what to pack and how to decide which road to follow along the way. This talk will help you to successfully deploy ideas and practices that you’ve learned at the conference.

The road to agility - AgileEE conference 2016 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

In this mini-workshop, you will experience how to use retrospective exercises to debug your retrospective meetings. People will work in teams to reflect how their retrospectives are going and will learn what they can do to make them valuable again. It’s a highly interactive session, learning by doing. I’ll bring in my experience from 18 years of doing agile retrospectives, and will set a culture where people will share their ideas and learn.

Mini workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives - Agile in the City Bristol 2...

Ben Linders

Agile talks a lot about self-organized teams, where developers and testers work together to deliver software. But what can you do to make teams succeed? Ben Linders will explore why you want to work in a team, the benefits that teams bring, and how to (not) manage teams. What is an agile team (and what not) Why would you as a developer want to work in a team, what’s in it for me Which benefits do teams have for organizations, stakeholders, customers, etc How to manage teams, the do’s and don’ts How developers, managers, and business people, can effectively communicate and collaborate

Teams what is in it for me - GrowIT 2018 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

For the first time, I’m doing a session at the Online Testing Conference. I’ll be playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards to help people explore how things are going and to improve their way of working. Improving Your Quality and Testing Skills with Gamification So many challenges, so little time. As testers we need to sharpen the saw, but how? Gamification can be a way to look at how you’re doing and find out where to improve. It’s a great way to have everyone involved and get the best out of people. In this presentation, Ben Linders will play games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards to show how you can explore your current quality and testing practice and decide in your team on what to improve or experiment with. Players can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices. In teams, people can use the cards to share their experiences and learnings. Different game formats can be used to share experiences on testing and quality principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively. Takeaways Show how to use gamification to self-assess your current way of working. Play games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards. Explore how to facilitate games to enhance quality and testing in agile teams. \ Online Testing Conference OnlineTestConf was the first 100% online conference to provide all the advantages of attending professional QA related conferences: personal learning, networking etc. without the shortcomings of scheduling, expenses and travel. The conference has been running for the past 5 years on a semi-annual basis, long before COVID-19 forced all live events online. Our next event will be our 10th OnlineTestConf! Conference attendees are from all parts of the world, we host well known speakers as well as young presenters, and discuss everything that relates to Testing and QA. Attendance is and will remain free of charge and we invite anyone who sees themselves involved in testing and the testing community to join.

Improving your quality and testing skills with gamification - Spring 2021 Onl...

Ben Linders

Why What and How of Agile Retrospectives - Agile Tour Lille 2015 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

Becoming agile is a journey, which can be difficult to travel. Assuming that you know why you want to become agile (a first but crucial step) you start looking for ways how to get there. Questions like "what do you want to keep from your current way of working" and "what would you like to change" will come up. Then the next question is "what are ways to do this". There isn't a silver bullet or standard route to become agile, you have to find your own way. A fixed route description won't help you. You need an "agile map" that inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go on your journey. The Agile Self-Assessment game is here for you to travel your agile journey. Come play the Agile Self-Assessment game in teams to discover how agile you are and what you can do to increase your agility. Players will receive a link to download the card game so that they can play it in their own organization (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 License).

Agile Self-assessment Game - XP Days Benelux 2016 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

The agile manifesto proposes a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why, what and how of agile retrospectives, with many practical tips, stories, and examples.The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why, what and how of agile retrospectives, with many practical tips, stories, and examples. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way. The retrospective facilitator (often the Scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective ones. Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.

Spicing up agile retrospectives - TopConf Linz 2017 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

If your organization wants to become agile and lean, your teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively. In this game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they can hinder your team, and decide what can be done and who can take appropriate action by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. The impediment game played in this session teaches the five steps for handling impediments effectively.

Problem, what problem? Agile Impediment Board Game - ACE conference 2019 - B...

Ben Linders

Valuable Agile Retrospectives: Continuously Improve your Agility - Agile Tour...

Ben Linders

Nowadays, many agile teams are doing retrospectives regularly. They are investing time to reflect, learn, and take action to improve their way of working and deal with problems that they are facing in a structural way. Organizations are seeing the benefits from this: teams that are becoming empowered, being able to deliver more value, happy employees, and fewer people leaving the organization. It’s time to take retrospectives to a higher level, and use them to reveal and solve systematic organizational problems. Problems that exist at a project or product level are related to the collaboration between teams and their stakeholders. Agile retrospectives can be used to do that, but you need a different approach. In this session, Ben Linders will show how we can use retrospectives to improve the agility of organizations.

Organizational agility: Taking retrospectives to the next level - DevOpsCon M...

Ben Linders

The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why and how of agile retrospectives, with much practical tips, stories, and examples. Ben will also give a workshop on Valuable Agile Retrospectives on October 22.

Spicing up Agile Retrospectives - Agile Tour London 2015 - Ben Linders

Ben Linders

What's hot (20)