Agile Lessons from the World of Roller Derby
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Roller Derby is an assertive team sport which is played on roller skates and requires large amounts of skill, agility and flexibility. This talk will delve into the world of Roller Derby and what is necessary for team success. It uses Roller Derby to illustrate how behaviours we think are useful can sometimes get in the way of success. This leads to a discussion of patterns and anti patterns in Agile software development.
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Agile Lessons from the World of Roller Derby
- 1. Agile Lessons from the world of Roller Derby
- 2. So what is Roller Derby anyway?
- 3. Is it like Roller Ball?
- 4. © © MGM
- 5. © MGM
- 6. skates
- 7. skates ball
- 10. © MGM
- 18. #hivemind
- 19. 2 minute jam
- 20. clear goal
- 21. ranking
- 23. by the skater for the skater
- 35. quads vs inlines
- 41. So, is it like Roller Ball?
- 43. skates
- 47. Is it like Roller Ball?
- 48. Lessons • Communications • Teamwork -> #hivemind • Clear goal • Timebox • Self organising • Swarming • Sustainable pace • Velocity target • Hero culture • Winners / losers • Methodology wars • Rules enforcement • Agile vs Waterfall • Certification as guarantee
- 49. @IvanaTerrorBull
Editor's Notes
- 90% of the time people who don’t know what Roller Derby is ask me this question.
- Rollerball was a film released in 1975 and set in 2018 when there is no war – only rollerball. “In a corporate-controlled future, an ultra-violent sport known as Rollerball represents the world, and one of its powerful athletes is out to defy those who want him out of the game.”
- Screen shot from the film.
- They are skating – good start.
- Rollerball is played with a ball…
- Rollerball is also played with very cool motorbikes.
- A LOT of people die (or are very seriously injured) in Rollerball.
- In 2002 there was a remake. The outfits were better but the film wasn’t. You have been warned…
- Roller derby is played with 2 ‘jammers’, one from each team, on the track at any one time. You can tell that they are the jammers because they have a star on their helmets.
- Roller derby is played with 4 blockers from each team on the track at any one time. You can tell they are blockers because they don’t have a star on their helmets. There are 10 players on the track in total (5 from each team, 1 jammer and 4 blockers).
- At the start of the ‘jam’ (2 minute time-boxed play period) the jammer needs to get past the blockers of the opposing team, who (strangely enough) try to block her…
- Once past the blockers the jammer skates as fast as she can around the track…
- Until she reaches the blockers again and tries to get past. Each time she passes a blocker she scores a point.
- Good communication is essential to Roller Derby. Good communication is also essential in Agile – in fact a lot of agile techniques are purely around improving communication – regular meetings, demonstrations, retrospectives and visual progress indicators such as burn down charts
- Teamwork is essential to Roller Derby success. A single blocker working on her own is quite easy for a jammer to pass, but 3 or 4 working together in a ‘wall’ can hold back a jammer for a long time. Good teamwork is also essential in Agile. Being willing to work together to achieve more.
- In Roller Derby there is the concept of #hivemind. It is used to describe the perfect working group, where the team acts together and becomes more than the sum of its parts. One of the important aspects of Agile techniques is the building of a team in spirit, not just in name. Regular meetings mean that the customer becomes part of the delivery team, rather than being an interested party. They become responsible for what is delivered and have more influence over it. As such the whole team works together.
- Roller Derby is timeboxed. Each jam lasts a maximum of 2 minutes and the full game consists of one hour of gameplay. A jam can be ‘called off’ early by the lead jammer when she feels there is an advantage to doing so (such as the other jammer being about to score some points). Many Agile approaches include timeboxed iterations, although they’re more likely to be 2 week timeboxes rather than 2 minutes. Although they can be called off early by the customer there has to be a drastic reason for doing so.
- There is always a clear goal in Roller Derby. Get more points than the other team. Get as many more points as you can because it will really help with the team’s rankings. In Agile too we should have a clear goal. Closely working with the customer allows the whole delivery team to have a clearer view of the reason why the features are needed. Iteration goals also help to focus team’s and give them a sense of purpose.
- Roller derby teams are ranked according to their results when playing other teams. They are often focussed on improving their ranking and they know exactly what score differential they need to do that when they go into each game. They are aiming for certain score levels. Agile teams often have a velocity target they are aiming for too. One company I worked with had a ‘failing’ agile project which consistently delivered around 30 points each Sprint, but which aimed to deliver 45 points each Sprint. When I ran one of their retrospectives it became clear that the Scrum Master had planned out the whole delivery (including which stories would be in each Sprint) from the start to the end and told the team that they had to deliver 45 points each Sprint in order to meet the timescales. The team wasn’t failing – the Scrum Master was. The velocity should be discovered not imposed. The question which should have been asked was if we achieve a velocity of 30 for the rest of the project what does that mean for our deliveries and the financial benefit of the project? Should the project be cancelled? Should requirements be prioritised differently?
- What about those jammers? They are the heroes of the track. They are the ones people watch and the ones who score the points. But the fact is that they couldn’t score points without the help of their blockers stopping the other jammer and breaking up the walls of the opposing team’s blockers so that their own jammer can get through. Do you have a hero in your team? The one who jumps in to save the day and gets all of the glory? This tends not to be the case with Agile teams who are measured at a team rather than individual level. The best developer I ever worked with delivered fewer points of work that anyone else on the team, but he increased the productivity of every other team member.
- Many Roller Derby teams are managed in a ‘by the skater, for the skater’ manner. This means that they run all aspects of the club themselves, each taking responsibility for areas which interest them personally and helping other people out when needed. This covers all aspects, including financial, PR, event management, kit purchase and maintenance, business plans, website maintenance, social media marketing, merchandising, charity fund raising, etc. This gives people the chance to make a difference and build new skills. In Agile teams self-management is the name of the game. This involves the whole team taking overall responsibility for delivery as well as for deciding how that delivery will be achieved. Empowerment. The people who do the work on a day to day basis are the best people to understand the problems and come up with improvements.
- A ‘star pass’ occurs when the jammer takes the star off her helmet and passes it to one of the blockers, who then becomes the jammer and is able to score points. In a way this is like swarming, in that people are working outside their area of immediate expertise in order to gain benefit for the team. But this is still limited to one person.
- In roller derby there are 14 people on a team and only 5 are on the track at any one time. Generally people are swapped in and out to give them time to rest before they go back on track. That’s because roller derby is not played on a ‘sustainable pace’ approach. Often the pressures on teams to deliver can lead to a non-sustainable pace too. This needs to be guarded against as we don’t have spare people to swap in and out to give the team a rest…
- In roller derby there are winners…
- And losers… Can it be like that sometimes in agile? Where one team is seen as doing worse than other teams? Who does this help?
- How do you pronounce roller derby? It depends where you are from and how you interpret the route of the word. Are there pointless arguments like this in agile? I think there are with regards to which methodology to use. What benefit does sniping between XP, Scrum, SAFe etc do? We would be better seeing this as trying to improve the way we write software. What are the lessons we could learn from each of the approaches? There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – accept that other people have different opinions and see why they hold them – is there a slight change you could make to your approach to improve it with ideas from other approaches?
- How many refs are there? Remember – 5 members of each team on the track at one time, 10 in total. 1 ref? < 5 refs? <10 refs? >=10 refs?
- 11 refs!
- Refs are very serious.
- And refs are very hard working.
- There are a huge number of rules in roller derby. WFTDA is the most common ruleset used (74 pages). In agile there are lots of ‘rules’. For example, daily meetings, retrospectives, pair programming, WIP limits. When these are just applied without thought to why they are there you end up with a non agile process driven approach (people and interactions over processes and tools). One organisation I worked with insisted that all Sprints were 2 weeks long and that one day each Sprint was spent on the demo, retrospective and Sprint planning. When people brought up in the retrospective that they were spending too much time in meetings this was swept aside because the process was too important. The important thing is to understand why those things are there so that if a team want to change the process, for example getting rid of the daily meetings, the questions are asked around how communications will be maintained rather than just saying ‘no’.
- The consequence of having rules is that at times people will break them and they will be punished with a penalty and sent to the sin bin. Within agile ‘peer pressure’ can be used to punish people and to make them confirm. Non-conformance can be an instigator of innovation.
- Roller derby is played on quad skates (four wheels – one in each corner). Not inlines. Don’t even insult me by mentioning roller blading. What’s wrong with you?! Why is it agile vs waterfall? Why is this a fight? Surely it’s about the right answer to the problem. For example, if a new system is needed to meet regulatory requirements you have no choice but to deliver everything – no product owner will be able to prioritise the most important. The regulations will need interpreting and a specification up front may be the right way to go. Assuming that you’ve thought of everything up front though is problematic and you may well end up with problems as the results are seen against real data. This for me is an example of where a hybrid approach would work. Specification up front and working in an agile way once development starts. These methodology wars are not helpful.
- Sometimes things go wrong… Things go wrong in agile too. How well do we cope when they do? Do we get up, dust ourselves off and ask whether we should adjust how we do things? Do we blame the approach, other teams, a certain team member? The answer to this question is probably the one which most predicts overall success or failure.
- Sometimes they go really wrong…
- I like looking at the pictures of where things go wrong…
- I’ll stop soon – honest…
- In order to play in WFTDA sanctioned games each player must pass the minimum skills assessment. This covers physical skating skills in order to make sure the person is safe to play and also a written test to ensure that they have a good grasp of the rules. In agile we don’t make people pass a test before they are allowed to take part. We do however see a number of people taking certifications and using them to claim a certain level of knowledge above those without certifications. To me certifications can have value as a learning route but are not a guarantee of quality or ability.
- Having found out more about roller derby we now attempt to answer the most important question of all…
- A LOT of people die (or are very seriously injured) in Rollerball.
- Skates - yes
- Ball - no
- Motorbike – sadly no Although I think they would be a great addition to roller derby and we should lobby for their inclusion
- Death – no Quite a few bruises and broken bones though
- No
- Picture of me playing roller derby.