“A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.” – Dalai Lama

As I sat in rapt attention to a talk by the Dalai Lama in honor of his 80th birthday celebrations earlier this year, there was an unexpected and serendipitous realization that many of his stories and messages shared an uncanny yet natural affinity to what we would call “being Agile”.

More recently, at the Agile2015 conference, Lyssa Atkins asked “What if agile in your organization were just practice ground for you getting skills to address global issues? What if?”

In this atypical session targeted at all those interested in viewing Agile values, principles and practices from a different vantage point, we will explore this interplay of social consciousness and agile, focusing on select musings from Dalai Lama on compassion, wisdom, experimentation, collaboration, leadership, and their applicability to our behaviors and actions as Agilists.

We all know that a Minimum Viable Product is a lean startup technique designed to test and validate if a solution actually solves a customer problem. It is an endeavor to go forth and learn  to then, iterate or pivot as you better understand the problem and solution.  To be successful, it is not only  about learning what the people want but also being able understand the most painful aspects of that problem to then define what is the minimum amount of work you can do to generate early value to them.  But how do we figure that out?  In this 45-minute workshop, you will learn what is an MVP;  why it matters; what makes a good MVP experiment; and how to get started on designing your own. By the end of this 45-minute workshop, you will have:

1. Created a problem statement, or hypothesis for an MVP
2. Turned your hypothesis into a list of possible experiments
3. Collaborated with agilists who will help you formulate your MVP concept and experimentation ideas

Learn, Play, Hack the game Cards for Agility.  Cards for Agility is a “Work Safe” game similar to Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity.  You will learn about the game, play Cards for Agility and then as part of the workshop participants will brainstorm new cards and topics for the Agile2015 Cards for Agility expansion pack. This expansion pack will be made available in for the game by the end of the conference.  Each attendee will get a copy of the game on a USB that they can print and use immediately and the winner at each table keeps a the physical game at that table.

Game Centered Learning techniques are hot right now in the Agile community for good reason, they foster engagement and learning in a safe environment.  We have been interested in the use of games for learning as a key part of our training/coaching toolkit for years and decided to develop a game that people could easily extend to help them, help others learn Lean/Agile topics.    Cards for Agility is released under the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)  as a Free Cultural Work so please feel free to hack it as you see fit.

Our goal for this session is fairly straight forward

• Introduce people to “Cards for Agility”
• Train people play the game
• Train them to hack the game
• Set it free into the world