This document describes a scrum game to teach agile principles. Participants are divided into teams who collaborate to build a model city using building blocks. They create a product backlog, estimate tasks, plan sprints on a board, and build during timed sprints. After each sprint they demo progress and retrospect. The process repeats over multiple sprints with a product owner providing feedback. Upon completion, teams reflect on their experience learning agile concepts through this hands-on simulation game.

1. Scrum Game

2. Learning the principles of the Agile manifesto
1. OPEN BACKLOGS THAT TRIGGER IDEATING over DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS TO FOLLOW
 Invitation for collaboration between a customer and teams
2. MINDFUL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT over A SERIES OF TASKS TO ACCOMPLISH
 Teach product development, not micromanagement on a task level
3. TEAMS COLLABORATING TOWARD COMMON SUCCESS over COMPETITION FOR SCORE
 A chance to practice skills of inter-team collaboration
4. USEFUL METRICS TO ASSESS BENEFITS OF AGILE over FIGURES THE TRAINERS ASKED TO COLLECT
 teach the team to own their process
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3. Organization
• Teams of 4 to 8
• Timing: ~100 minutes
• Boxes of bricks: lego, kapla,…
• Board, markers, flipboard sheets of paper,
sticky-notes
• Big table: ideally one per team
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4. Roles
• Product Owner: this is me. I represent the
client.
• Team members: all of you.
• Scrum master: optional. The game can be
played without scrum master. This is up to
you: self–organize.
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5. PRE-GAME: Organizing Teams (5 min)
• Self-organize yourself in groups of 4-8 people
and allocate the working space and material
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6. PRE-GAME: Project Chartering (5 min)
• All teams are building a single
product for the same vendor,
represented by the Product
Owner.
• The product is a CITY.
• Building blocks are lego / kapla
bricks.
• I am the main decision maker of
the product – it is my city.
• I will be involved in the
development process by being
available to answer questions
and provide feedback.
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7. PRE-GAME: Building the Backlog (15 min)
• We want to build:
– Small house: one storey building (several)
– Big house: two storey building (several)
– Shop
– School
– Church
– Hospital
– Kindergarten
– Bus stop
– Intersection (can be drawn)
– Park (can be drawn)
– River (can be drawn)
– Bridge
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8. PRE-GAME: Estimating (15 min)
• Choose an estimation method, but keep it
simple and keep it fast.
– Recently, agile gurus have recommended dropping
estimates.
• A possible approach is t-shirt sizing: S, M, L, XL
• Or you may use story points: 1 2 3 5 8 13
• Or planning poker
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9. GAME: Sprint Planning (10 min + 3 min)
• Build a unique Planning board for all
teams to make sprint planning more
visible:
– 3 sprint zones for each team
– Release Burndown chart
• You have 3 minutes to plan sprint #1
• Sprint duration: 7 min
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10. GAME: Sprinting (7 min / sprint)
• 7min ticking… www.online-stopwatch.com
• Start building
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11. GAME: Reviewing (5 min)
• Stop building
• Demo: where is the demo of my city?
• Update planning wall
• Update Release Burndown chart
• Retrospective: “how can we make it better the next
sprint?”
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12. GAME: release cycle
• Loop on sprints #2 and #3
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13. POST-GAME: Debriefing
• How did it feel being on a Scrum team?
• How did the short iterations go?
• How accurate were the estimations?
• What would we have done differently from the beginning, if we had another chance to play the
game?
• What was the job of the Product Owner?
• How did it feel after the first sprint when most items required re-work?
• How will your strategy change, if you know the Product Owner is unavailable during sprints?
• How did inter-team communication go? Were there any dependencies? How were they resolved?
• What did you learn?
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14. Thank you for playing
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15. References:
• www.lego4scrum.com
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16. Preparation for this workshop
• Gather material:
– Flipboard pages
– Markers of different colours
– Sticky notes
– Whiteboard
– For each team, 1 set of lego/kapla
• Prepare sticky notes with buildings
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