In every job that must be done,
There is an element of fun.
You find the fun and snap!
The job's a game.

- From "A Spoonful of Sugar", Mary Poppins

As an Agile Coach, I use games to demonstrate concepts to teams. Games take otherwise theoretical ideas and help teams feel them in their bones. Once they've gone through a demonstration, the air is ripe for further exploration through conversation.  Sometimes, though, you don't have the right game for the particular problem you are trying to address.  Fortunately, as Mary Poppins points out, there is fun in every job...it's just a matter of finding it. We all have experience making our own work fun, and I think that's what puts creating games in everyone's reach.  In this workshop, I'll share how I've gone about building games, and each participant will have a chance to build their own.

Note: I am calling this workshop a spoonful of sugar, not a bowlful.  While I love using longer games/workshops (like Alistair Cockburn's brilliant Elephant Carpaccio), I just can't grab the team for two-hour chunks of time all that often.  In this workshop, we'll focus on much shorter games that you can sneak in during a slow day, or in that hopeful moment just after sprint planning is completed.  These smaller games tend to isolate much simpler, smaller concepts.  I believe that a steady diet of these easy-to-digest games really helps teams incorporate the concepts in their daily work.