The first Agile (XP) Value is Communication. Communication is probably one of the most talked about themes on Agile teams, yet it is probably one of the most difficult ones to realise. Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen show us how in their session “Flirting” With Your Customers at Agile 2009.

Jenni and Ole liken developing rapport with a customer to two people flirting since successful relationships are based on Effective Communication through Mutual Understanding.

An 8 Step Guide to Flirting with Your Customer

1. Radar – Be switched on because every moment is a chance to connect with people.
You: I’m aware of my thoughts and how I’m feeling right now. I’m also aware of those around me.

2. Target – Identify who you need to connect with and why.
You: To deliver maximum value for my organisation, I need to gain support from senior management. Patrick’s a senior manager. I’ll go speak to him.

3. Move In – Show you’re interested in them by inquiring about their perspective on things.
You: Hi Patrick. Graham suggested I speak to you about how we currently deliver software. Do you have 5 minutes?

Customer: I’m on my way to another meeting.

You: How about I walk you there and we talk on the way?

Customer: OK!

You: What’s bothering you most about the software delivery process?

4. Back Off A Little – You’ve shown your interest in them, now give them a chance to reciprocate.
Customer: The way we do releases is a serious problem. They’re simply taking too long.

5. Open Up – Share more information.
Customer: Your concern mirrors my experience with the teams I’ve been coaching in your organisation. If we begin by applying some Agile practices to Release Management, we should be able to improve the process and reduce the overall time it takes per release.

6. Dance – Socialise!
Customer: Thanks for inviting me to this team lunch. It’s been great to hear firsthand from the team how they think Agile’s working out for us. What we really need is a repeatable process.

You: We’ll be learning more about process improvement based on the Theory of Constraints next Tuesday. We’ll be playing The Bottleneck Game, a production line simulation. You’re welcome to join us!

Customer: Mmm… I’m booked up already next Tuesday. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.

7. Get Real – Work through a crisis together.
You: Patrick, I need your help.

Customer: What’s the problem?

You: The Release Management team thinks Agile is just a fad. They want to sit tight and wait for it to pass.

Customer: Thanks for letting me know. I’m seeing the Release Manager this afternoon. I’ll let him know that Agile is the way forward and we all have to do our bit to increase the value we deliver.

8. Enjoy – Enjoy the relationship and help it grow.
Just as 20% of the cost of a piece of software is incurred during development and the remaining 80% goes into maintenance, a similar distribution of effort applies to establishing and growing relationships. 

Tips to Effective Communication and Meaningful Relationships

When applying the 8 steps, it’s important to remember to:

• Be open and receptive.
• Ask questions.
• Listen first.
• Find common points of interest/concern.
• Listen some more.
• Sense-check by playing back what you’ve heard (eg ‘If I understand correctly, the time it takes to do releases is a key concern for the organisation’).
• Apply the Agile Values (Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect). Always.

What I Liked About the Session

Jenni and Ole are a great example of pair-presenting. I thoroughly enjoyed their session for three main reasons:

1. It takes courage to tackle a tricky topic, especially that of human social interaction.
2. Jenni and Ole created an environment where everyone could safely experiment with the steps.
3. The steps were delivered in a good-natured way so as to make us laugh and help us remember them!

What Would Make the Session Perfect

• I would have liked to practice the 8 steps in triads (with two participants and one observer) in order to 1) gain a deeper understanding of the steps and 2) get feedback on my application of those steps.
• I would have liked to learn more about ways to grow a relationship – Step 8 – since relationships that endure are the ones that require time and effort.

Afternoon Timeslot 1:

• 14:00 – 15:30 – Learning: the best approaches for your brain with Mark Levison, Linda Rising because understanding how our mind works frees us up to grow.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – “Flirting” With Your Customers with Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen because I want to understand how the concept of flirting can be used to improve communication at work.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Applying Game Theory to Agile Contracting with Simon Bennett because I want to learn how to use Game theory to create compelling contracts.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – Skills for Agile Designers with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock because I want to learn how Agile Practices can increase the value of UX design.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – Coaching Success: Getting People to Take Responsibility & Demonstrate Ownership with Christopher Avery, Ashley Johnson because I want to learn The Challenge Game to help myself and others grow.

Afternoon Timeslot 2:

• 16:00 – 17:30 – The Business Value Game: How to build and use a Business Value Model with Portia Tung and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe because we creating the highest business value possible is why we do Agile.
• 16:45 – 17:30 – Scrum and CMMI: from Good to Great – are you ready-ready to be done-done with Carsten Jakobsen because it’s important to understand how to leverage the strength of both tools.
• 16:00 – 16:45 – Bob and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (The Biologist’s Tale of Risk and Uncertainty) with Julian Everett because it’s always handy to know multiple techniques for dealing with risk and uncertainty.

Today marks yet another Agile First – It’s the first time Pascal and I are presenting two of our all time favourite Agile games in the United States on the same day:

• 09:00 – 10: 30 (Grand Ballroom A) – We play The Bottleneck Game, a simulation of  a production line at The Hats and Boats Company where you’ll experience and apply the five focusing steps from the Theory of Constraints and learn about how it correlates with Agile, Lean and Real Options. Maximum 60 participants.
• 16:00 – 17:30  (Plaza Ballroom B) – We go for gold with The Business Value Game, a jam-packed game where you come to grips with release planning and the role of the Agile customer by playing sales people competing for resources to deliver the highest possible business value for your organisation. Maximum 50 participants.

Bonus! Henrik Kniberg, author of Scrum and XP in the Trenches, has volunteered to help facilitate The Business Value Game (having played it for the first time with us at Agile 2008) so that we can scale it up to 50 participants like we did at XPDay France earlier this year!

We’ve played these games on numerous occasions with our clients and Agilists in Europe, so we ‘re intrigued by how the participants at Agile 2009 will fare compared with our European counterparts! Come to the sessions early to avoid disappointment as places are limited. We look forward to seeing you there!

Where can I find out more?

You can download the games (including full instructions!) from www.agilecoach.net and play them for free with your colleagues and even family and friends. Warning: Having fun can be hardwork!

 All the games on www.agilecoach.net are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

Reviewing my plan for Day 2

As Tuesday’s conference day is fast approaching, I’ve reviewed my Real Options for the day.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to plan 1-day ahead which seems to give me a healthy balance of focus on the present day of the conference and enough information just-in-time for making well-informed choices at a sustainble pace. Sustainable pace is key at Agile 200X conferences because of the gargantuan amounts of information around!

Day 3 at Agile 2009

As usual, the sessions with emboldened titles are the ones I’ll be attending!

Morning Timeslot 1:

• 09:00 – 09:45 – Agile @ Yahoo! from the Trenches with Mun-Wai Chung and Brian Drummond because experience reports provide useful insights into an individual’s journey through Agile adoption as a part of team.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – Activity Theory for Manifesting Agile with Robert Biddle because I’m intrigued by cultural-historical activity theory, a psychological framework for understand collaborative behaviour.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – Narrative Acceptance Tests – A Behaviour Driven Approach with Antony Marcano and Andy Palmer because acceptance tests help define ‘Done’ and success.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – The Elephant in the Room: Using Brain Science to Enhance Working Relationships with Sharon Buckmaster, Diana Larsen because I want to understand how the male and female mind works and the impact it has on our relationships at work.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – The Bottleneck Game where Pascal and I’ll be co-presenting a simulation on The Theory of Constraints’ Five Focusing Steps because experiential learning provides learning that sticks!

Morning Timeslot 2:

• 11:00 – 12:30 – Telling Your Stories: Why Stories are important for your team  with Johanna Hunt and Rachel Davies because storytelling is a vital vehicle to improve our understanding of ourselves and those around us. If you love stories, check out Agile Fairytales – they help teams grow!
• 11:00 – 12:30 – You say tomato, I say Pomodoro with Renzo Borgatti because it’s a second chance to learn about personal effectiveness using timeboxing and other Agile techniques such as planning.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Emergent Design & Evolutionary Architecture with Neal Ford because it will enable me to explain why Big Design Up Front in comparison with iterative and incremental design more effectively.
• 11:00 – 12:30 –  Help me to see… corporate culture with Alan Cyment, Tobias Mayer because I want to improve my collaboration skills by playing the Dialogue game.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Multi-team sprint planning – how to do all the teams together with Henrik Kniberg because Henrik’s a great speaker who always provides value as a hands-on Agile practitioner!
• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Agile PMP: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks with Mike Cottmeyer because I want to better understand the responsibilities of Agile Project Management.

‘Change happens. It cannot be controlled. It can only be influenced.’

One of the key criteria for successful Agile Adoption is to make it grow and endure throughout an organisation. To overcome this challenge, George Schlitz and Giora Morein show us how to navigate organisational relationships using an approach called Mapping the Agile Enablement Battlefield presented at Agile 2009.

Storytime: The Story of Jorj the CSM Pig

Once upon a time, there was a friendly and happy pig called Jorj. Jorj the CSM Pig was part of a great team of pigs. Together, they delivered a successful project.

Shortly afterwards, a curious thing happened. Jorj and his team were reduced to bacon.

The moral of the story, according to Giora and George, is that organisational change is difficult. In Jorj’s case, it was very difficult indeed. It’s perfectly possible to be successful at project delivery yet fail in the overall Change effort.

Put your Strategic Thinking Cap on

For Agile to endure in an organisation, it needs to be part of an organisational change programme.

Agile Adoption fails at an organisational level when we:

• Focus on delivering while ignoring the importance of organisational change
• View organisational change as a distraction
• Insulate ourselves from change beyond the team
• Too much practice – not enough principles being applied

According to Giora and George, the key to the kind of Agile that endures is:

• Develop a strategy – Find out where and when to exert influence.
• Understand that Change is War (in that it requires a strategic approach).

The Objective: Agile Team Leads (aka Scrum Masters) need to be Change Agents. As Change Agents, their objective is to identify how to invest some effort and resources on the Change effort.

The Approach: Using a ‘Mapping the Battlefield’ approach, team leads can visually represent a system of influencers by identifying influencer types, such as ‘Ally’, ‘Supporter’, ‘Neutral’, ‘Threat’ and ‘Enemy’.

There are 3 Influence Strengths:

• Undetermined influence
• Strong influence
• Weak influence.

Identifying the System of Influencers

Day 1: Establish the Perimeter – Create an alternative view of the organisational diagram in terms of influencer types.

• Identify known influencers surrounding the team – Start with the closest people to the team
• Identfy positive and negative influencers – Assess based on direct interaction as well as hearsay
• Update your map as new information arrives.

Day 2: Assess the direct influencers

• Focus on direct influencers (those who interact directly with your team)
• Add in more influencers as you identify them.

Day 3: Assess indirect influencers

• Indirect influencers that influence your direct influencers
• Influence your perimeter by influencing others
• Start with second-degree supervisors.

Day 4: Continue information gathering and analysis

• Rinse and repeat.

Putting the Action Plan into Action

The Response Strategy is to focus on the proximity and strength of the influencers.

Priority 1 – Enagage with the strongest direct threats.
Priority 2 – Enagage with the strongest indirect threats.
Priority 3 – Enagage with the weak direct threats.

My Takeaway

The ‘Mapping the Battlefield’ approach is about information gathering and analysis and strategic thinking. It can be used as an effective thinking tool so long as we live the Agile Values and behave responsibly. As always, the most useful thing to do is look within yourself and change for the better first because true leadership is by example.

The key to reliable delivery, according to Mary Poppendieck, is understanding that Workflow is Orthogonal to Schedule. This is my experience report of the session at Agile 2009.

The Secret of Success: The Story of the Empire State Building Project

The goal of the Empire State Building project was to 1) create the tallest building in the world; 2) bring in revenue by opening the building to the public within a year.

The secret of the project team’s success was Focus on Flow, in this case, getting the right materials to the right people in the right place.

Key Sucess Factors

1. Teamwork of owner, architect and builders working as one team – consulting and involving experts early.
2. Hire deeply experienced builders (then delivering to a fixed price contract).
3. Focus on the key constraint: material flow.
4. Decoupling – creating ompletely independent schedules allowed swift response to impediments/surprises.
5. Cash Flow Thinking: each day of delay cost $10,000 ($120,000 today), making speed well worth it.
6. Design to meet constraints – the schedule was not derived from the building design, the building was designed based on constraints (such as building in the middle of New York, the laws of physics, zoning ordinances).

How to Achieve Reliable delivery

1. Establish high level system goals. Create high level system design based on the goals. Understand what the the business really needs.
2. Involve those who understand the details early in the design process. There is no substitute for experience.
3. Apply teamwork based on respect and trust. Managing by solely by contract-based thinking increases costs 30% – 60%.
4. Reduce complexity with wise decoupling  (eg reduce architectural and schedule dependencies; provide alternate options for ‘Critical Path’ items).
5. Understand and manage the biggest constraint – know what that constraint is and how to deal with it.

Tips for Leveraging Workflow and Scheduling Together

1. Level the workload because it provides greater control over the schedule and increases a schedule’s predictability.
2. Create the schedule with people with knowledge and experience.
3. Optimise throughput, not utilisation because lower utilisation delivers higher performance.
4. Ensure slack is built in because it allows for team to respond to feedback and cope with normal variation.
5. Limit work to capacity.
6. Timebox don’t scopebox.

No need to look so glum! There are even more Real Options on Day 2 of the conference than Day 1! Marvellous.

On Monday, I wrote: I have yet to make my first choices for the timeslots, I’m keeping my options open for now!

On Tuesday, I’m writing: It’s 6 am Tuesday morning and I’ve refined my shortlist for Day 2 (see emboldened session titles) to at least two options per timeslot based on what I learned on Day 1 and what I need to learn from the remainder of the conference. Of course I don’t have to decide which session until the last responsible moment… just before the session begins or just before the session ends. It’s important to note, however, that the value of each session (Real Option) diminishes depending on when I join the session.

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Morning:

• 11:00 – 12:30 – Pragmatically “Crossing the Chasm” from Project-level to Enterprise Adoption with Ahmed Sidky and Chris Sterling because for Agile to endure, it has to be adopted across the enterprise.
• 11:00 – 12:30 Release Planning (The Small Card Game): Discover What Works with Chet Hendrickson and Ron Jeffries because I get to play a game run by Chet and Ron!
• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Beer Game with Agile Teams – MIT Game Theory in Agile Project Management with Tom Looy because it’s a great chance to learn about Game theory with a game.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Pomodoro Technique: can you focus – really focus – for 25 minutes? with Staffan Noteberg because I’ve been practicing with the tomato and want to use it right.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Creating “Big Picture” Designs without Big Design by Desiree Sy because getting the approach to UX on Agile projects right gives us a greater chance of delivering the highest possible value to the customer.
• 11:00 – 11:45 Tips and Techniques For Implementing An Agile Program Across Distributed Teams with Tamara Sulaiman because tips and techniques for distributed working offer insight into the nature of team.
• 11:45 – 12.30 – Leveraging Collaborative Tools with Distributed Customer Teams with Luke Hohmann because I want to see which tools are useful in which contexts and why.

Afternoon:

• 14.00 – 15.30 – Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns with Steve “Doc” List because as an Agile Coach, I’m always looking for ways to improve my facilitation skills.
• 14.00 – 17.30 – Do I Still Have a Job? Roles and Org Structure in an Agile Transition with Alex Pukinskis and Mark Kilby because I’m interested in learning about models of change.
• 16:00 – 16:45 – An Agile Development Team’s Quest for CMMI Maturity Level 5 with with Sean Cohan with Hillel Glazer because I want to understand how Agile and CMMI can complement each other in practice.
• 16:45 – 17:30 – Group Relations & Social Systems with Dan Mezick because I want to learn what Group Relations is and how it can be useful in Agile.
• 16:00 – 17:30 – How to Develop Your Leadership Power Daily: An Agile Approach to Growth with Chris Avery because I want to learn about the mental models from work on the Responsibility Process that I already use with teams.

The conference looks set to get off to a great start with plenty of Real Options on Day 1! Here’s a shortlist of the sessions I’m most curious about. Emboldened session titles indicate my current first choice per timeslot. Putting The Law of Two Feet into practice is always a Real Option, too!

Monday – 24 August 2009

Morning:

• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Agile Playground with Tobias Mayer because it’s a chance to share our games and get new ideas for applying Agile. Pascal, Vera and I already share our games on www.agilecoach.net.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Workflow is Orthogonal to Schedule with Mary Poppendieck because I’ll learn ways to communicate and deal with a common problem in project planning in order to better manage projects.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Developing Agile Leaders and Teams: A Developmental & Transformational Path with Gilles Brouillette because I’ll get a roadmap for showing how people can develop their Agile skills as individuals and team members.

Afternoon:

• 14:00-17:30 – Creating Agile Simulations and Games for Coaches and Consultants with Elisabeth Hendrickson and Chris Sims because I love creating games to help myself and others learn more effectively.
• 14:00-14:45 – New Approaches to Risk Management with David Anderson because I want to learn about new ways of managing risks to give the projects I work on the best chance of successful delivery.
• 14:00-14:45 – Software Development for Disney Animated Feature Film Production by Rajesh Sharma and Brian Wherry because I want to see what happens when Art and Technology come together when Disney develops software to produce its feature films.
• Accidental Adoption – The Story of Scrum at Amazon.com with Alan Atlas because I want to hear about how Amazon adopted Scrum.
• 14:00-15:30 – Advances in Release Planning by Jim Highsmith because I want to learn new techniques and get ideas to get more value out of Release Planning.
• 14:00-15:30 – An introduction to Agile Through the Theory of Constraints because it’ll provide the basic theory behind The Bottleneck Game (a simulation of how to apply the 5 focusing steps from the Theory of Constraints) which Pascal and I’ll be facilitating on Wednesday morning.
• 16:00-16:45 – Giving and receiving effective feedback by Liz Keogh because I can never get enough practice on giving and receiving feedback and, most important of all, taking action from feedback.
• 16:00-17:30 – Mapping the Agile Enablement Battlefield with George Schlitz and Giora Morein because I want to find out how others define Agile Enablement and how it can be compared to a ‘battlefield’.
• 16:00-17:30 – Team Start-up: one of the first Agile Adoption activities by Lyssa Adkins because different coaches have different approaches for introducing a team to Agile.

So much choice, so little time

Apprentice: The problem with Agile 2009 is that there’s too much choice!
Agile Coach: Is it possible to have too much choice?
Apprentice: Sure it is! I don’t have the time or the energy to read through all the session descriptions before the conference starts!
Agile Coach: It’s always better to have too many options than too few.

Can too much choice be a bad thing?

The wide choice of parallel sessions and topics can be a major headache for many attending Agile 2009 next week. When asked, ‘Can too much choice be a bad thing?’, I find myself instinctively thinking ‘Yes!’ at the sight of the hefty programme, yet I know there’s a better answer because of the numerous high value sessions in the programme.

The real problem is the amount of session information participants have to process in time to make choice after choice to make the most of their time at the conference. One approach is to use Real Options, an optimal decision process that lets us postpone important decisions until the last responsible moment so that we can gather more information before we need to decide. The result: the best possible decision based on all the information we have at the time.

What’s a Real Option?

A Real Option has:

• A value – if not, why would we consider it?
• An expiry condition – a deadline or condition by which we have to choose
• A cost: Buying cost + Exercising cost – the Buying cost gives us the right (not the obligation to implement a decision in the future for a known cost); the Exercising cost is the agreed price to implement the decision.

Real Options: The Optimal Decision Process

The Optimal Decision Process helps us structure our thinking in 7 steps (especially when we’re under pressure):

Step 0: Identify your goal(s)
Step 1: Identify your options
Step 2: Calculate the first decision point: Decision Point = Deadline – Implementation Time
Step 3: Decide which option to take under which circumstances
Step 4: Seek out information and more Real Options
Step 5: Reduce Implementation Time to push back Decision Point
Step 6: Wait… wait… Until the first/next decision point
Step 7: Make the decision with confidence.

Real Options applied

Let’s see how Real Options works when it comes to planning your investment of time at Agile 2009.

Step 0: Identify your goal(s)
Let’s assume your goal is to learn as many useful things you can use at work as possible. Ideally you’ll have acceptance criteria so you know when you’ve reached your goal. Refer back to your goal often throughout the conference so that you can refine your strategy to get the most out of the conference to satisfy your acceptance criteria.

Step 1: Identify your options
Each timeslot (eg 14.00 – 15.30) contains a set of sessions you can attend. Each of those sessions is an option. Only those that you consider valuable are Real Options. Let’s assume you create a shortlist of sessions you think will be useful to attend per timeslot. These are your Real Options per timeslot. Other Real Options might include having meaningful discussions while chilling out at the bar instead of following the programme.

Step 2: Calculate the first decision point: Decision Point = Deadline – Implementation Time
Now let’s take a timeslot with the Real Options you’ve identified. You work out that it’ll take you 10 minutes to get to any session at the conference venue. This is the implementation time. Note that the implementation time for all the options are therefore the same: 10 minutes. Next, we calculate the deadline for the options. The deadline for each option is, in fact, when the session ends so if you want to get there for the summary in the last 10 minutes, for a session that ends at 15.30, then 15.20 – 00.10 = 15.10 (although it’s worth bearing mind the value of an option, in general, decreases the later it is that you join the session). For those of you who like to participate from start to finish, it may be more useful to consider the deadline as the time the session starts (ie 14.00), in which case the decision point is 14.00 – 00.10 = 13.50.

Step 3: Decide which option to take under which circumstances
You’ve come up with a shortlist of sessions you’re interested in for a particular timeslot, but you still haven’t decided which one to go to. As a preliminary step, I typically prioritise the sessions from most likely to be useful to least likely to be useful to me. My deciding circumstances might include: 1) If I discover evidence that a speaker is a good speaker/facilitator, then I’ll prioritise their session over the others; 2) Depending on my energy levels nearer the time of the timeslot (it’s important to maintain a sustainable pace at a 5 day conference!), I might prefer a presentation over an interactive workshop.

Step 4: Seek out information and more Real Options
A key activity of Real Option is information gathering. By gathering as much information as possible up to the decision point, you’ll be able to make better informed decisions. Find ways of hearing the presenter speak prior to their session so you can decide if their communication style suits your learning style. Speak to other conference guests and speakers to find out their views on your first and second choices. That way, you can validate your most valuable choices by leveraging the wisdom of crowds. You’d be amazed how far and wide the reputation of a good presenter and/or presentation travels even at a conference of more than a thousand people.

Step 5: Reduce Implementation Time to push back Decision Point
One way of reducing the time it takes you to come up with a shortlist is to divide and conquer the data processing effort. By this I mean, mingle with other conference guests as early and as often as possible (remembering sustainable pace of course!). Look around for folks in similar roles with similar interests to yourself and find out which sessions they think have the most potential. Ask 10 random people which session they plan to go to next and you’re bound to find some opinions that re-affirm or negate your choice or even ideas for more options. This approach means you also get to meet 10 new people out of whom at least one is likely to enrich your conference experience.

Step 6: Wait… wait… Until the first decision point
Remember, you only have to make your session choice 10 minutes before the session starts or 20 minutes before the session ends. With the bar-discussion option, you only have to decide before the bar closes.

Step 7: Make the decision with confidence
Imagine it’s now 08.50 on Monday morning and you’ve got as much information as you could gather in the time given with the effort you care to invest. You exercise your first choice option with confidence because you know it’s the best choice based on what you know and if it goes wrong, you’ve got other real options to exercise.

Read more about Real Options here. Remember ‘Sustainable Pace’ and have fun!

Well-known for our penchant for fun and games, Pascal and I will making an appearance at Agile 2009 to play two of the most popular games in our ensemble: ‘The Bottleneck Game’ and ‘The Business Value Game’.

Learning about the Theory of Constraints with The Bottleneck Game

Pascal and I kick off next Wednesday with The Bottleneck Game to demonstrate the five focusing steps from the Theory of Constraints and how it correlates with Agile, Lean and Real Options.

It’s a favourite among our set of learning games which demonstrates, time after time, the relevance of the Theory of Constraints not just to projects or our work, but the way we see the world around us. After playing the game with us, you’ll acquire the necessary techniques and hands-on application to share with colleagues and friends.

Join us to learn:

• About Agile, Lean and Real Options techniques
• How to understand processes, a crucial step in business analysis
• How to use the Theory of Constraints, the Five Focusing Steps and Throughput Accounting to improve processes
• How to explain all of the above to your teams and customers
• How to create a shared “big picture” vision of a value stream for people and teams who work in functional silos
• How to get teams to collaborate to reach a common goal.

Arrive early to the session because there’ll only be enough room for 60 game enthusiasts!

Surely it doesn’t get much more exciting than this… or does it?

‘Show me the money!’ with The Business Value Game

… Yes it does! Pascal and I trialled The Business Value Game for the first time in public at Agile 2008 in Toronto. We’re back this year and in Chicago with a bigger and better version based on the valuable feedback we’ve had from playing with our numerous client teams, conference goers and fellow Agilistas around the world.

Join us next Wednesday afternoon and:

• Experience the issues facing the Customer/Product Owner
• Experience the link between program, project and story prioritisation
• Discover the right level at which to estimate Business Value
• Learn “good enough” business value estimation techniques to start delivering higher value today.

We’ll be running a total of 6 parallel teams for 50 people. Come early to get a seat at the table!

Request for Help!

We’re looking for a helper to help co-facilitate The Business Value Game. The only pre-requisites are 1) You’ve played the game before and you understand how it works; 2) You want to play it again in the large with 60 people! Contact us if you’re available and interested to help out.