Transcript
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Distributed Team Engagement Exercises Get to know Sococo while building a highly-connected remote team using these easy game-based exercises
Contents Author’s note..................................................................... 3 Engagement exercises..................................................... 4 Icebreakers........................................................................ 5 Game 1: Tic Tac Toe-coco
Self-Organization Exercise..................................................... 7
Game 2: There Can Be Only One Decision-Making Exercise...................................................... 9 Game 3: People Planning Poker
Decision-Making Exercise.................................................... 11
Helpful resources............................................................ 14 Sharing success.............................................................. 15
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Author’s note This program is intended to help teams use Sococo’s features in fun and innovative ways, and will result in a quick understanding of how the platform works. Each game has specific team learning objectives that promote lean principles intended for organizational improvement such as self organization and group decision making. They will also introduce users to the basics of Sococo, such as moving around the map, personal avatar configuration, and observational cues in the environment.
Team exercises to promote self organisation and group decision making through application of Lean principles. If you haven’t already completed the Sococo Technical Readiness Assessment, that’s a great way to make sure everyone’s internet and computers are ready to go. To kick off your Sococo game activity, you’ll want to grab your team and take them over to the separate games space that your account manager will have set up for you. Contact your Sococo account manager if you need help with either of these. Once you’re in, this handbook will walk you through how to engage your team using a special map in your games space designed just for this purpose. We hope you and your team enjoy this unconventional use of the Sococo platform!. Mandy Ross Sococo
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Engagement exercises Icebreakers............................................................................................................ 5 These are short little games intended to “warm up the crowd” before jumping into the larger, longer games. These should last between 15 - 30 minutes depending on the size of the team and number of rounds.
Game 1: Tic Tac Toe-coco............................................................................ 7 Self-Organization Exercise
Facilitator Notes The Facilitator is the key to the success of these games. The person in this role should be able to answer questions about using Sococo and know how to complete the activities in each game. We recommend reading the Sococo QuickStart Guide if you are not already familiar with it, or spending time with a Sococo Coach.
Modeled after Tic Tac Toe, in this game, we’ll learn how to use visual cues to self-organize around strategy and tactics.
Game 2: There Can Only Be One.............................................................. 9 Decision-Making Exercise This is a role playing game that will teach us about how to use visual cues and interaction to to help the decision making process. Agile teams can use this technique for backlog grooming, though it’s good for all types of teams.
Game 3: People Planning Poker............................................................ 11 Decision-Making Exercise This game will be familiar to Agile teams. We will use our avatars to select sizes, and then use triangulation to finalize on a size for each backlog item.
Power Tips • When you complete rounds in each game, ensure everyone knows the team will reconvene in the home room for that game. Instruct the team to set their home room to that room for the duration of each game. They can just quickly click the Home button to return at the end of each round.
sococo. Distributed Team Engagement Exercises.
• In Settings: General, set “Keep your media turned on” to On, so that your mic and video stay on when people switch rooms. If you have it set by default to Off, it will be a little tedious to turn it back on every time the avatars change positions on the map.
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Icebreakers The simplest way to introduce people to Sococo is with a 10-minute icebreaker. This involves asking a simple question that everyone can relate to. Each person is given a chance to say their name, location, and then answer the question. Inevitably, there are a few answers which inspire comment and chatter, which is the desired effect. The facilitator should occupy the Lobby and greet people as they come in, helping with headset and chat orientation as needed. Once set, they can be directed into the Game Home Room.
The facilitator should occupy the Lobby and greet people as they come in, helping with headset and chat orientation as needed. Once set, they can be directed into the Game Home Room.
When everyone is assembled, the facilitator determines who goes first by asking who: • was most recently on an island, or • most recently drank something, or • most recently went grocery shopping. Pick one question and figure out by discussion who goes first. Start with that person and proceed clockwise around the ping pong table.
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Icebreaker questions Here are a few great icebreaker questions. Usually one is enough, but feel free to go as many rounds as seems appropriate based on team reactions. 1. What did you have for breakfast? 2. What is your dream vacation? 3. If you could have any animal as a pet, what would it be? 4. What is your favorite car and what color would it be? 5. What is the one food you loathe? 6. Who is your favorite fictional character? 7. If you could video chat with one living person for an hour, who would it be? 8. Would you rather have invisibility or flight as a superpower? 9. What is the worst movie you’ve ever seen? 10. What is the oldest piece of clothing you own that you still wear?
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Self Organization: Tic Tac Toe-coco
Game 1: Tic Tac Toe-coco
Minimum Players: 9
Objective In this game, we’ll learn how to use the map and visual cues to create a team strategy and self-organize around it to win the game. It will also introduce the concept of “I” spaces and “We” spaces. Description What we have here is a standard game of tic tac toe, but we will use our avatars as game pieces and Sococo office rooms as the playboard. We are going to form two teams of more or less equal size by gathering in each conference room. Roles • 2 Team Captains • Players Board configuration This section of the game board includes two team rooms set up as “We” spaces, and a room divided into single “I” spaces. The facilitator will use the team room to set up the game for the team.
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Game Play Get set up
Self organize and strategize
• The facilitator first divides the group into two roughly
•T he team who goes first as per the coin toss makes
equal groups while the team is assembled in the
the first move. As a team, they must decide which
home room for the game.
team member will occupy which office.
• The facilitator either asks for volunteers or appoints a team captain for each group.
•T he team takes turns sending avatars to the rooms on the tic tac toe room map based on their strategy to put three avatars of the same color in a row.
• The team captain is responsible for:
• Leading team discussions
• Encouraging self-organization
• Ensuring team set-up is done correctly
• Finalizing team decisions during game play
• Before the teams divide up into the team rooms, the
•W hen the Facilitator sees that the game has been won, the team captains jump back to the home room, and the team should follow. •T he game concludes with smack talking back in the home room, and rematches are encouraged.
facilitator decides who goes first by virtual coin toss.
• Share a screen
• Call which team captain will be heads or tails
• Click on http://justflipacoin.com/
• Once the order has been determined, the teams are sent off to their rooms to make two decisions.
• Team color
• Team name
• When these have been determined by each team, the team will change the avatar to the team color, and rename the room. When complete and observable to the facilitator, this will be the indication that the teams are ready to start playing. • The facilitator remains in the Game Home Room.
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Decision Making: There Can Be Only One Minimum Players: 5
Game 2: There Can Be Only One Objective
In this role playing elimination game, we’ll use an abstract concept to show how to use rooms and visual cues as a way to facilitate decision making and prioritization. Description In this game, the team will begin with story arc and a list of five items with the goal of eliminating all of the items on the list except one. There are four rounds. In each round, the team will engage in a series of discussions based on the story arc regarding each item’s importance and after voting, eliminate the item with the least amount of votes. At the end, they will have worked together to make a decision to select one item. We encourage you to play this game with a bit of whimsy. To demonstrate, the example we use is the following story arc:
Agile Power Tip Use this model to help the product owner, product team and stakeholders groom the backlog by going through a series of elimination and discussion rounds that can enrichen the backlog vetting experience.
We have started a high end ice cream company. We need to select one of our five flavors to serve at a food convention in high end markets in boutique shops in London and New York.
The game map is pre-configured for this story, and we encourage you to develop your own stories and rename the selection rooms as your imagination allows. Roles Make sure you have at least one stakeholder from each of these areas represented in the team: • Production (ice cream maker) • Sales (ice cream seller) • Quality (ice cream tester)
• Business (ice cream profit-maker) • Marketing (ice cream visionary)
The stakeholders should change their avatar names to match their role. Board configuration This section of the game board includes two team rooms set up as “We” spaces, and a room divided into single “I” spaces. The facilitator will use the team room to set up the game for the team.
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Game Play Get set up • The facilitator acts as the decision maker (Agile Power Tip - this is the Product Owner), and provides a quick overview of each flavor based on the story arc with their own creative touches. T ip: It’s a good idea to have these typed up ahead of time and put into a chat channel for quick team reference using room chat or Slack. We have a sample for you to use below.
•W hen you’ve read through the descriptions, invite the team to ask questions of you and the stakeholders. Remember: there is no right and wrong. We’re just organizing information, so be creative and even provocative! This is where your team’s personality will come out and it’s important to make sure everyone participates.
•W hen the stakeholders are satisfied, the decision maker kicks off the vote by closing the home room door. Each participant will hop to the corresponding
Ice cream story arc list item descriptions • Chocolate - very popular worldwide, easy production process, quality depends totally on cocoa and that has a big range in price. • Lemon - Not very popular in U.S. but big in Europe, production is difficult. Quality is hard to control; we use only Sardinian lemons so we are entirely dependent on their crops for both cost and quality. • Vanilla - Very popular worldwide, production is easy and very simple. Quality is easy to control, and depends almost completely on the kind of vanilla we use.
room to vote for their choice. •T he item with the least votes is eliminated, and the facilitator replaces the room name with “OUT”. Each round after we eliminate them, we’ll discuss what is left and the team can lobby for their choice. •P roduct owner will facilitate discussion and solicit feedback, ideas and other input from the team. •R ounds are repeated until a final choice is selected.
• Cherry - Not terribly popular, but lots of cherry varieties to keep things interesting and not dependent on crops from one region. Quality not super easy to control, but our Ranier Cherry was our top seasonal seller last year. • Caramel - Big in the US, not so much in Europe. Very cheap and easy to make because we make our own caramel and just add it to the Vanilla, but also creates a dependency on Vanilla production. Quality is easy to control, but also can be difficult to control in production.
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Decision Making: People Planning Poker
Game 3: People Planning Poker
Minimum Players: 5
(incl. Product Owner and ScrumMaster)
Objective Conduct a highly interactive relative sizing exercise, and finalize sizes using triangulation. Description This is a form of planning poker but instead of using cards, we’ll be using our Sococo avatars, and instead of sizing user stories, we’ll size pictures of dogs. Instead of using cards or chat to vote, we’ll jump into rooms that correspond to the sizes. At the end, we’ll fill out a tracking sheet that will help the team triangulate down to an agreed upon size. Roles •S crumMaster (facilitates the sizing session, tracks votes, ensures all voices heard) •P roduct Owner (answers questions about each item being sized) Board configuration Each room in the top center of the game map is assigned a size. The rooms are by default sized in the Fibonacci sequence, and can be modified to use t-shirt sizes or other values as desired. There are rooms for people who have a question before they can cast a vote, opt out of the vote, or think the story should be split.
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Game Play Part 1 - Rough Sizing Kick off the session with The ScrumMaster first explains how the voting works:
Power Tip Change it up – find your own set of items that relates to a team theme or area of common interest for your team.
• The SM will share a picture of a dog in the chat window in the right corner. Here is a set of dogs that we have selected for the game which you can use, though you are welcome to use any set of dogs that you like.
Dog 1
Dog 2
Dog 3
Dog 4
Dog 5
Dog 6
• The team discusses the dog and its merits of bigness and smallness. When the discussion is complete, the SM says GO and each person jumps to the room that corresponds to the size you choose. • Remain in place while the SM records tally of votes for each size in a simple table. 1
2
3
5
8
13
Size
Dog 1 Dog 2 Dog 3 Dog 4 Dog 5 Dog 6
• When ready, the SM gets someone in each room, and the team re-organizes in the Game Home Room after each round. • The team discusses the vote and determines the size of each dog, and assigns it a tentative size in the red column.
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Part 2 - Triangulation The objective of size triangulation is to establish the range of “bigness” to “smallness” of the items being sized. The chart will look something like this after the team has completed all 6 rounds of voting: (Note: there is no right answer to this game, this is just an example of how a voting round may go.) 1
2
3
5
Dog 1 Dog 2
Size
4
5
13 1
3
1
6
3
1
Dog 5 Dog 6
13
6
Dog 3 Dog 4
8
1 7
1
2
3
5 1
3
6
13 2
This is where the team will engage with each other and the product owner to have a more detailed discussion about the dogs and reach a conclusion on size. At this point, the ScrumMaster and Product Owner are critical to keeping an engaged discussion going. The first task is to compare any dogs that had the same size assignment. Are the dogs really the same size? If one is smaller or bigger than the original vote, does that impact the sizes of the other dogs? Next examine the dogs from smallest to biggest and comparing them to each other successively, ensure that they are in the right position in the order. The team may also establish that further investigation is needed and schedule a spike, or that the dog is too big and must be split (jokes ensue - it’s just a metaphor, folks!). At the end of this discussion, the dogs will have a size. The SM should explain how this relates to User Stories and the dogs represent a very small initial product backlog. The team will use this as the basis on which to calculate velocity.
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Helpful resources Sococo Blog
Distributed Team Resources
Sococo Quick Start Guide
Request a tour of Sococo
Connect with a Sococo Coach
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Sharing success Are you interested in contributing an Agile game or team-building exercise to the Sococo community? We love to hear your ideas about the creative ways our customers use our platform. You can also: • Write a case study • Write a blog • Join us on a webinar
What’s next? To learn more... Visit us online at sococo.com, email us at
[email protected], call us at +1 (650) 265-7013 or find us at:
© 2016, Sococo
