Playing Games is the best way to learn - You must try it too

Open up to playing Games - Learn like never before!

Today, my Agile Mentor Vinayak Joglekar, showed us one concept by making us play a game.

So far, I liked playing games, but felt ridiculous to initiate one. Yes, I call myself an Agile Evangelist, but there was a ice breaking required.

Vinayak is Founder and CTO of our firm Synerzip Softech. He helped us start a group named Agile Evangelist. We meet every monday at a coffee play to discuss things.

Today we played a Game which showed us the basic principles of Kanban.

Here is the premise of the game. There are two designers who keep designing module, they pass it to the two developers. The developer in turn pass it to one QA who passes on to one Deploy Person.

The key thing of the game is the productivity factor introduced by giving each person a dice. Along with dice each designer is given a set of cards.

The flow of cards is from Designer -> Developer -> QA ->Deploy (From right to left)

How it is played?

Understand the purpose of Dice and Cards.

Dice show the productivity of a person each day. People have good days and bad days, and his does effect their productivity. The cards represent the amount of work they got done.

Each person rolls the dice and for each dot on the dice they pass those many no of cards.

This means if Designer rolled dice and had 5 dots, he will pass five cards to the Developer. If developer rolled the dice and he had 2 dots, he can pass 2 cards to the QA. If QA rolled the dice and it had 4 dots, he can still only pass 2 cards as that's what he had.

Also, at any given time, a person can keep rolling the dice and he may not have any cards to pass, so he waits until he has cards to pass on.

Phase 1

Be Super man and take max items on your plate

1 Dot = 1 Card

2 Dots = 2 Cards

3 Dots = 3 Cards

4 Dots = 4 Cards

5 Dots = 5 Cards

6 Dots = 6 Cards

In phase one each person rolls the dice and passes those many cards to person on left. So if a person constantly roll 5 he will keep passing 5 cards to left. Now it the person on Left, constantly rolls 2 he will keep passing 2 and more cards will pile up with him.

Why does this happen? Think about it for a while.

Phase 2:

Be a Normal person (and wear your underwear on the inside)

1-3 Dot = 1 Card

4-6 Dots = 2 Cards

We have learned our lesson, we take limited work on our plate at time.

Play this version to see what is the result.

Overall, we observed unlike before any time, a person does not have a pile of cards with him/her. The person's mood does not effect his productivity so much. Overall we limited the threshold of work a person can pass on (meaning process).

At last, the moral of the study. Don't try to be Superman, wearing your underwear on the inside , is more comfortable.

Cheers,

Rohit