Smooth Sailing - Agile Retrospective Collaboration Game - Practical Workshop

A hands on workshop facilitating a hands on retrospective team game that aims to help you achieve that feeling of Smooth Sailing.

Attendees will be introduced to this game, play the game, and feedback to the room, with case examples and tips for facilitating the game themselves.

Smooth Sailing is a game you can play as a development team, or, with clients and customers to help understand the product you are building better and, how the journey to its creation is fairing.

This game will give you a new and fun way to run a retrospective to help to gain your barrings, identify what's putting the wind in your sails, the anchors holding you back, and discover your buried treasure. Then you'll plot your course and map a way forward that raises those anchors and catches the tide and a fair wind.

Merchants, Pirates and Cruisers welcome, bring your captain, crew and guests! Join us for some constructive fun, and feel free to bring an idea for a topic you'd like to reflect on.

Teams attending the workshop as a group can work on their own current journeys. Individuals can join groups reflecting on a common shared topic. All puns intended, see you onboard!

 

 
 

Outline/Structure of the Workshop

Through my work with teams adopting agile the game Smooth Sailing has evolved as a great way to run retrospectives.

If held at the end of the programme we could run a retrospective of the conference itself, latest agile tools and tactics also make good group topics.

Teams, either developers or developer/client combos would attend to reflect on their own projects giving them something to take back to the workplace that’s based on their current work.

I've run these workshops lots of times before with clients and they are always fun and valuable. I have case examples that I have shared in previous presentations so the idea to run a workshop format has come from the positive feedback from attendees of those presentations.

Audience - This is applicable for all levels of audience, it works really well with a mix of levels when it is a current working team. eg example in video of graduate getting positive feedback of his crucial value to the team when he thought he was a bit of a nuisance to them!

Type - some slides but mostly hands on practical with posters, post its and people!

Format 90 mins

0   Introduction to game with example
10 Groups and topics
20 Create Ship
25 Add Sails and Anchors
35 Score Sails and Anchors
50 Identify actions
60 Feedback to group (1min each)
70 Case examples
80 Tips & Questions
90 end

 

Learning Outcome

 

  • Collaboration Games
  • Retrospective Meetings
  • Faciliatation Skills

 

Target Audience

teams

Video


schedule Submitted 7 years ago

  • 60 Mins
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    Pair programming was documented in Kent Beck’s book eXtreme Programming Explained and published in 1999.

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    This session will include a short activity where everyone will get an opportunity to pair using Lego’s.

  • Zuzi Sochova
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    Zuzi Sochova - Agile Communication

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    Zuzi Sochova
    Agile Coach and Trainer
    sochova.cz
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  • Fabiola Eyholzer
    Fabiola Eyholzer
    CEO
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    90 Mins
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    Traditional Performance Management systems are antiquated and in deep crises. It is time to move to a successful iterative performance flow.

    --

    Traditional Performance Management systems are in deep crises. Their industrial era approach is unable to meet the demands and thinking of 21st century people and organizations.

    Join this interactive workshop to discuss how Lean | Agile enterprises can push the reset button and move from an administrative Performance Management process to a successful iterative performance flow.

     

    This is a highly participative open space session and we will cover questions like:

    – Why is there a need to push the reset button on Performance Management?

    – How do we approach goal settings in an agile environment? What is the best balance between collective vs. individual goals? Can you align individual    goals with agile thinking?

    – Why is there a trend to eliminate employee appraisals? Are 360-feedbacks the new employee appraisals? Can we still promote people without appraisals and less/no hierarchical structure?

    – How valid are traditional bonus models or are there better ways for remuneration and acknowledgement?

  • Steven Martin
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    Steven Martin - Managers and the Land of the Lost

    60 Mins
    Talk
    Advanced

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    In this interactive session, come learn an exercise you can perform back at your organization to help clarify roles and responsibilities of the management layer. Your managers will gain clarity on what they should be doing and what they should be passing on to help not only their teams perform better, but the organization as well. Equip your managers with the knowledge to help them no longer be lost.

    As a bonus, the great thing about this Roles exercise, is that it can be used beyond the Managers as well. It’s been applied at both the Team and Executive layers. But, seems to resonate best with Management.

  • Michael Nir
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    Michael Nir - Building highly effective virtual teams

    Michael Nir
    Michael Nir
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    Sapir Consulting US
    schedule 7 years ago
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    60 Mins
    Talk
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    The ongoing challenges of creating the magical bond between team members in small and big endeavors can be elusive. What’s more, in the last few decades, this has become increasingly challenging. This presentation provides you with the much needed practical advice on how to create an effective collaborative team environment.
    .
    The presentation follows the Nine must haves of team of leaders as appear in Michael’s book.
    The Must-Haves of a High Performance Team
    Must-have #1: Develop clear goals and plans
    Must-have #2: Effective communication

    Must-have #3: Improve and maintain positive relationships among member
    Must-have #4: Clarify roles and responsibilities
    Must-have #5: Enhance mutual trust
    Must-have #6: Solve problems and make effective decisions
    Must-have #7: Value and promote diversity
    Must-have #8: Successfully manage conflict
    Must-have #9: Provide development opportunities and recognition

  • Mariya Breyter
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    Mariya Breyter - The "Anna Karenina Principle" in Agile

    Mariya Breyter
    Mariya Breyter
    Agile Coach
    Goldman Sachs
    schedule 7 years ago
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    60 Mins
    Talk
    Advanced

    Leo Tolstoy’s book Anna Karenina begins: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” We can refer to it as “Anna Karenina principle” which is fully applicable to implementing Agile at scale. Imagine, you rolled out Agile in your organization successfully and your energized teams are delivering software on cadence and with high quality. What do you hear next from the management? Let’s scale. Let’s have more of those. So you coach more, establish repeatable practices, coach the teams, and all of a sudden, it all falls apart. Unmanaged dependencies, overlapping product backlogs, conflicting roadmaps bring quality issues, delays in delivery, frustrated teams, and unhappy stakeholders.

    In this attempt to apply the "Anna Karenina Principle" to Agile, we will explore relationship between Scrum and DevOps, ATDD and Waterfall, value and cost, "happy" Scrum and Scrumfall. This conversation will make you think and laugh, agree and disagree, talk and listen, but most importantly, it will introduce some patterns in Agile and Scrum that will help you assess what all "happy" Agile implementations have in common from technical and non-technical perspective.

    The presentation includes a group exercise to validate the principle.

     

     

     

     

  • Markus Wissekal
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    Markus Wissekal / Dana Pylayeva - The Scaling Ballgame

    90 Mins
    Workshop
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    Although it's not easy, as an agile community we "know" how to do agile in teams.
    One of the next challenges is scaling agile to the programm- or portfolio level.
    In this game you will experience all kinds of manmade scaling issues.
    Do you have an idea that will make scaling easier? Try your idea in the simulation and get instant feedback.

    The scaling game is based on a very popular agile game, that has been around for almost 10 years. 
    This version has been presented at Agile Lille, XP-Days, and the Agile Games Lab Belgium.

    During the game you will experience scaling issues that occur when multiple teams work on the same product. Multiple Teams will look for solutions to scaling issues and experiment in an iterative way with their ideas on solving them..

    It was co-created by Markus Wissekal & Yves Hanoulle.

  • Jason Yip
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    Jason Yip - How things don’t quite work at Spotify and how we’re trying to solve them

    Jason Yip
    Jason Yip
    Staff Agile Coach
    Spotify
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    Let's put aside the "bubblegum and unicorns" of the Spotify Engineering Culture videos and talk about what doesn't quite work at Spotify and how we're trying to solve it.

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  • 45 Mins
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  • 60 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    Adventures with Agile beyond Software

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    Firstly Belinda helped to introduce agile to the small tech sector in the county and then started taking agile beyond software development into business management. She will share the journey of a 2 year project to introduce agile to the wider business community including Geologists, Breweries, Design Agencies and Fashion Designers! Belinda will share how these businesses used agile to support their growth plans with great success.

    Belinda will share how she used an agile approach to develop and deliver these projects, and the outputs they delivered including the world class agile conference Agile on the Beach. More recently she has co-founded a tech network in Cornwall which is now recognised as the second fastest growing tech cluster in the UK. Finally she will share the story of using agile to write and publish her book with Pearson.

    In this session Belinda will share her insights and observations of what worked well, common reasons for resistance and why businesses outside the sector love agile too!

    Check out a short video of Belinda and her clients talking about their adoption of agile http://www.beingagileinbusiness.co.uk/video-interview-agile-beyond-software/

    Gain a fresh perspective of what agile working looks like, the journey of agility and how it can be applied as a mindset not just a methodology

  • Fabiola Eyholzer
    Fabiola Eyholzer
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    schedule 7 years ago
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    45 Mins
    Lightning Talk
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    People are the heart & soul of Agile. Let’s turn your Human Resources into Agile People Operations to boost your enterprise agility.

    --

    Inspired, empowered, and engaged people are the heart and soul of Agile – and HR.

    Transforming your organization into an agile enterprise is no small deed. And it does not matter where you are on your way towards embracing agility on all levels. There will be a time when you need to align your people solutions with the mindset and demands of agile people and organizations.

    We will talk about how to turn your Human Resources into Agile People Operations and boost your agility.

  • Wayde Stallmann
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    Wayde Stallmann - 3 Minute Improv Games to Improve Your Teams

    90 Mins
    Workshop
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  • Hugo Messer
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    Hugo Messer - How to manage distributed teams successfully

    Hugo Messer
    Hugo Messer
    Entrepreneur
    Ekipa.co
    schedule 7 years ago
    Sold Out!
    90 Mins
    Workshop
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    In Hugo’s workshop, participants will create a best practice board in teams of 5-6 people. The teams go through each block of ‘The Bridge Canvas’. The goal is to share best practices, ideas and experiences. Per block, each team selects the ‘best best practice’. At the end of the workshop, each team will present the best best practices for each block.

     

    At the start of the workshop, Hugo shares a few best practices (personal ones + from other distributed agile experts). Each person gets a handout with clear instructions. This includes some questions to stimulate thinking within the team + some best practice examples per block.

  • Michael Nir
    Michael Nir
    President
    Sapir Consulting US
    schedule 7 years ago
    Sold Out!
    60 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    After hiking towards a glacier in Denali National Park Alaska, we were making camp near a small lake. Suddenly I heard my friend saying “Michael there’s a bear here, it is on this side of the lake”. And there he was, a ‘young’ 200 Pound Grizzly no more than 10 feet away… Influencing a bear in the Alaskan outback is quite similar to handling the bears or rather stakeholders of the modern organization – both have their own agenda, and will have you for lunch if they think it serves their interests and appetites.

    In this presentation we learn best practices for leading and influencing without authority, including the three essentials model: stakeholder leadership, team orientation and individual adjustment. Do you have the proper toolset to influence the bears when you lack the authority?

  • Omar Bermudez
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    Omar Bermudez - Trust, Canvas, and Games...

    90 Mins
    Workshop
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    In an agile organization, TRUST is a must; However, trust does not mean the same for each person. Everyone agrees that trust could take long time to build it, and few minutes or seconds to destroy it.
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    Learn to use the Team Trust Canvas and games dynamics to strengthen your team performance. Participants will learn which factors are essential for trust and how to use this new capacity to create an environment that brings the best of people.
    I will share with you this fantastic tool, and how I used successfully in the latest years with more than 25 dysfunctional teams. You will have the opportunity to try it during our session.
    Hand on activity, a lot of fun and serious work.
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    • Understand which features influence the team trust
    • Define the trust and value of teamwork
    • Create a new Team Trust Canvas model
    • Use the non-violent communication for improving team connection
    • Align personal and team values
    • Understand how to cause lasting change
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  • Omar Bermudez
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    Omar Bermudez - Performance Appraisal MAKEOVER: Stop measuring people & Start evaluating your ecosystem

    60 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    Performance appraisals are one of the most frequently criticized talent management practices in agile organizations. The criticisms range from their conflict with the agile values to their having a destructive impact on the relationship between managers and their subordinates. Let's talk about how we can transform this huge "individual" process in a "ecosystem" process that respects the agile values, gets people happy & engaged, and last, but not less important, allows to improve the organization ecosystem.
    I will share my experience and observations from the latest 4 years working on this matter, what went well and how I solved the major hurdles along the way.
    By attending this session you will learn major resistance point in HHRR department (and why), how to help HHRR department in this journey, how management level could help HHRR department, games dynamics to get teams involved and engaged, and avoid a boring process.

help