Business problem:
Alignment
Education
Serious games used:
Knowsy
An increasing number of software development teams are taking an Agile approach. This methodology fundamentally changes the way that teams of software developers collaborate, both with other team members and with people outside the group.
Before hitting on the right collaboration formula, the early stages of Agile often create growing pains that are familiar to anyone who has been through organizational transformation. People within the team, as well as many interested parties outside the team, may not see Agile (or any significant change) in quite the same way. As they learn new techniques, team members might differ over which to emphasize first. The ultimate goals of adoption (time to market, quality, adaptability, and others) may not be clear to everyone involved or affected.
To help organizations navigate these difficulties, the Scrum Alliance, an organization dedicated to the adoption of Agile practices, Â worked with Innovation Games to develop a special version of Knowsy. This game tests the ability of players to rank, in order of significance, items that are important to a particular person (or “Oracle”), In this case, participants rank the importance of specific Agile techniques for two primary reasons:
- To see how well they understand Agile, as compared to the answers that some noted Agile experts have provided.
- To compare their answers to those given by members of their same team, to see where their understanding of Agile matches or varies.
Innovation Games and the Scrum Alliance jointly launched this service, ScrumKnowsy, in August 2012, coinciding with the major yearly Agile conference in the United States.
For more information…
The ScrumKnowsy web site
Innovation Games background on Knowsy
Video featuring one of the Agile experts, Jim Koplien, discussing ScrumKnowsy
