This document provides instructions and materials for a board game called "Swarm'n'roll" that is intended to teach agile principles like swarming, work in progress limits, and cycle time. It can be played by 3-6 players who take on roles in a software development team. The game is played over two iterations, with players rolling dice to simulate progress and coordinating work by moving tasks and items between workflow states on a board. Scorecards are used to track metrics like items completed and cycle times for discussion at a post-game debriefing.

1. Swarm’n’roll
Laurent Speyser
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons,
PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

2. Content of the guide
The learning objectives
Number of players and required material
The rules of the game
Tips for facilitation
Timeline
Printable resources
Iterations backlog size and estimates
Questions for debriefing (proposal)
Physical implementation of the wall (proposal)

3. Learning objectives
Swarming
WIP limit
Cycle time
But also,
Self-organization
Collective commitment

4. Players
4 players is ideal for the dev team. An additional
player could also play the role of the PO.
3-6 players works well. In this case you’ll have to
rework the iterations backlog (number of items
and estimates) proposed in this guide.
My advice :
Number of items = 2 * number of players
Sum of points = (10 * number of players) - number of players

5. Material
1 dice
1 pen per player
Sticky notes
A roll of tape
Printable slides

6. Timeline
Start up
Welcome players
Explain the general rules of the game
1st iteration
Explain the rules of the iteration
Play
Fill the score card
2nd iteration
Explain the rules of the iteration
Play
Fill the score card
Debriefing20’ (
30’ (
10’ (
30’ (
5’ (
= 90 minutes
20’ (
5’ (
5’ (
20’ (
5’ (
5’ (
5’ (

7. Welcome!
From now, and until the end of this game, you are a
software development team.
Your work is planned in 2-weeks iterations.
As a team, your goal is to deliver as fast and much
items as possible according to the order of the
iteration backlog (priority of the Product Owner).
You meet daily along the iteration to coordinate your
work and show the progress.
Let’s skip the days and “play” the 10 daily meetings!

8. Rules
Backlog item
Workflow
to do  in progress  to review  done
Once the item is done, it is considered as “delivered”.
Review
Effort to review an item is always 1d.
Items should be reviewed with the Product Owner (PO).
The PO is available to daily review only 1 item.
The review of an item reveals no issue (you did a great job!)
#14

1011
LSTeam member
Daily progress
Estimates are
points of effort
(aka ideal days of work)

9. Rules
A dice is used to decide the progress done
during past working day
Score Progress
0
1
1+ roll again
Unfortunately, I didn’t
progress as expected.
Something slowed me
down a lot…
Yesterday was a great
day, I’ve progressed much
more than expected!
I’ve progressed
as expected.

10. 1st iteration board
To do In progress To review Done
#14

#02

#27

#13

#25

#09

#11

#26


11. Rules
Organization of the team
An item is implemented by 1 team member

12. Rules
At daily meeting, each in turn…
First decide if you start working on a new item. In this
case, put your name on the card, move it in progress and
say “I started working on this item”.
Then
• If the item you are working on is in progress, roll the
dice. Put the progress on the card. If sum of progress =
points estimate, move the item to review.
• If the item you are working on is to review, and if the
PO is available, you can decide to move it to done
without rolling the dice and say “This item is done!”.

13. 2nd iteration board
To do In progress To
review
Done
To do In progress Done
   
   

   

   

   
 
  

  
2
4
18
#14

#02

#27

#13

#25

#09

#11

#26


14. Rules
The team creates a work plan at the very
beginning of the iteration
The work plan is the set of tasks that the team
should do to implement each item of the backlog. If
item estimate = n points of effort, work plan of the
item = n tasks with estimated effort = 1d.
The effort of the team to create its work plan is half
of its daily capacity. To take it in account, half of the
team members won’t roll the dice at the first day of
the iteration.

15. Rules
Work flow
Work In Progress (WIP) limits are set. A team
member can’t move a step forward an item or a task
if WIP limit is reached.
Organization of the team
Several team members can work on an item.
Team members working on the same item can pair-
work on a task.
Once all the tasks of an item are done, the item
moves to review (until the WIP limit is reached).

16. Rules
At daily meeting, each in turn…
First decide if you start (pair-)working on a new task. In
this case, put your name on the card of the task, move it
in progress and say “I started working on this task”.
Then
• If the task you are working on is in progress, roll the
dice. Put the progress on the card of the task. If sum of
progress = effort estimate, move the task to done and
say “This task is done”.
• If the item you are working on is to review, and if the
PO is available, you can decide to move it to done
without rolling the dice and say “This item is done!”.

17. During iterations
After daily meeting
Update the iteration burndown chart
– Remaining points not done (items)
– 2nd iteration only: +remaining work not done (tasks)
Update the cycle time table; working days on items,
done status and cycle time
At mid-iteration
Ask the team: “What will be delivered at the end of the
iteration? How much are you confident in this?”
Note the forecasts on the iteration burndown chart

18. At the end of iterations
Fill the score card of the iteration
• Count #items done and how much according to
the priority of the Product Owner (to compare
with the forecasts of the team at mid iteration)
• Count #points done
• Count remaining ideal days required to move all
items to done
• Roughly count days of iteration to move all items
to done (ideal days required / #players)
• Roughly compute the average cycle time

19. At the end of iterations
Fill the score card of the iteration
• Count #items done and how much according to
the priority of the Product Owner (to compare
with the forecasts of the team at mid iteration)
• Count #points done
• Count remaining ideal days of effort required to
move remaining items to done
• Roughly count days of iteration to move
remaining items to done (ideal days required /
#players)
• Roughly compute the average cycle time

20. Debriefing (proposal)
Feeling
How did you live the game? Did you feel something different between 1st and 2nd
iteration?
Review of the facts
What was your strategy throughout the game to achieve the goal? For example,
how did you organize as a team? What difficulties did you face? How did you
overcome it?
Lessons learned
What did you learn? What did you become aware of during this game? How could
you have achieved a better result?
Criticism of the game and gateway to the real context
What analogies could you make with your context? What interest do you see in
this for your work? What makes you want to implement something? Was it
realistic or excessive to you, why?
Transfer - theoretical teaching
Back to the learning objectives

21. Implementation (proposal)
Zone focusing on the iterations result
(could be used for debriefing)
Iteration boards to
create manually

22. Score card
Iteration #Items #In
order
Points #Items in
progress
Effort Days of
iteration
Cycle
time
1
2
Variation
Done Remaining

23. Cycle time table
Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Done Cycle time
#14

#02

#27

#13

#25

#09

#11

#26

Day of iteration

24. Burndown chart
32
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
points
day
Linear (points)
To do (points)
? 

25. Cycle time table
Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Done Cycle time
#14

#02

#27

#13

#25

#09

#11

#26

Day of iteration

26. Burndown chart
32
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
points/d
day
Linear (points)
To do (points)
Linear (d)
To do (d)
40 ? 

27. Resources
This game was inspired by…
Featureban
http://www.agilegurugram.com/2016/assets/download/
Presentation/MikeBurrows_featureban-slides.pdf Thanks
to its author Mike Burrows
Scrumble http://scrumble.pyxis-tech.com/ Thanks to
Pyxis
Many thanks to my colleagues for testing this game and
contributing to its improvement : Pascale BLANCHARD,
Kevin BOQUET, Karim MAZOUNI, Gilles RELIN-SIMONNOT,
Sylvain GARABIOL.
