Continuous Play: The Future of Agile (presented at Agile Gravy Conference 2014, St. Louis)

CONTINUOUS PLAY

@mattphilip

#AGSTL14

T h e F u t u r e o f A g i l e

WHAT IF WORK WERE MORE LIKE A GAME?

WHAT’S NEXT FOR AGILE ?

1998 CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION

2004 CONTINUOUS DESIGN

2010 CONTINUOUS DELIVERY

2014 CONTINUOUS PLAY

CONTINUOUS PLAY = GAMIFIED WORK

Gami!cation is integrating game thinking and design into activities to increase engagement, learning and fun.

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WHERE DID IT COME FROM?

SO WHAT IS THIS TALK ABOUT (AND NOT ABOUT)?

Using games solely for training or

planning (a.k.a. serious games)

Marketing and loyalty programs

Experience report

Applying game thinking to daily

work

Gamification as a way to build in

continual, reflective improvement

Discussing how agile teams have a

head start

Missions of our own!

Gamified services (e.g., Foursquare)

CREATE A CHARACTER 1. Get together in small groups

2. Make sure you have people from multiple guilds (a.k.a. organizations)

CREATE A CHARACTER

•  Player name (your name)

•  Character name (made up)

•  Class (Ruby Warrior, Kanban Wizard, etc.)

•  Level (agile experience)

•  Guild (organization, team)

•  Spells and special skills (org-change magic, analysis spell, ninja coding)

WHY GAMIFY?

PERSONAL GOALS

ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS

DEFINING TRAITS OF A GAME

REEVES AND REED’S 10 INGREDIENTS FOR GAMES

1.  Self-representation with avatars

2.  3D environments

3.  Narrative context

4.  Feedback

5.  Reputation, Ranks and Levels

6.  Marketplace and economics

7.  Competition under explicit, enforced rules

8.  Teams

9.  Parallel, reconfigurable communication systems

10.  Time pressure

AGILE IS THE KEY INTERSECTION

WORK AGILE

PLAY

WORK-PLAY MIRROR 1.  Pair up within your guild

2.  On a piece of paper, make a table with two columns: Work and Play

3.  List as many of your experiences that are common to both

A DIFFERENT KIND OF “FLOW”

CSIKSZENTMIHALYI’S 9 FEATURES OF FLOW

1.  Clear goals at every step

2.  Immediate feedback

3.  Balance between challenge and skill

4.  Merger of action and awareness

5.  Exclusion of distractions

6.  No worries about failure

7.  Absence of self-consciousness

8.  Time becomes distorted

9.  The experience is an end in itself

FLOW AND AGILE

Flow Steps Clear goals

Measure progress of goals Concentrate on task and keep making finer distinctions in challenges

Develop skills to meet challenge

Agile Practices Value Features, Stories

Running tested features Cycle time

Refactor mercilessly, incrementally develop, test-drive development

Pair, practice katas

INTRINSIC REWARDS

Satisfying work

Experience (or at least the hope) of success

Social connection

Meaning/Purpose

CREATE A FLOW EXPERIENCE 1.  Pick a simple, mundane task that you don’t experience flow with today and

plot it on the flow diagram.

2.  How might you gamify it to create a flow experience?

HOW AGILE IS LIKE A GAME

VOLUNTARY, PARTICIPATORY SUCCESS

•  Voluntary discipline

•  Self-organizing teams

•  Teams built around motivated individuals

•  Collaborative improvement

QUEST-LIKE WORK

•  Stories

•  Narratives

•  Spikes As a team member I want to gamify our work So that I can feel like I’m not even working

VISIBLE PROGRESS AND RULES

•  TDD

•  WIP limits, explicit policies

•  Continuous-integration build monitors

•  Card wall

FEEDBACK

•  Customer

•  Team

•  System

•  Process

INTENSIFY THE FEEDBACK 1.  Quickly list as many forms of feedback as possible that you get on your

team.

2.  Brainstorm ways to intensify those feedback moments.

HIGH LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION

Realtime, face-to-face communication

Pairing to solve problems

GAME DIMENSIONS

•  Get to the other side (Complete the iteration, feature)

•  Visit all the map (Unlock “secrets” by technical discovery)

•  Time limits (Velocity metrics, iteration time box)

•  Finite or infinite (“iteration-less” development)

•  Competitive or cooperative

CREATING CONTINUOUS PLAY

SOMETHING BIGGER THAN OURSELVES

What is the organization about and where do we fit in?

The “Why” of work (Sinek’s “golden circle”)

Epic context for action

WHAT’S YOUR STORY? 1. Decide what kind of game narrative suits your work.

2. Elaborate on that narrative.

KNOW YOUR PLAYERS

PROJECT INCEPTION

Team members create characters, identify what they’ll need

Game designer works with customer to create narrative

Customer helps map out quests, assigns virtual monetary value

Designer and customer determine what it means to win, rules, virtual currency and rewards

PROJECT INITIATION (ITERATION 0)

Team members mini-quest for their equipment

Game designer tells the team the narrative

Team sets goals for first missions

Guild leadership

DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY

Gamify small components to address pain points

Hackathons and secret missions to destroy bug “bosses”

Use retrospectives, Toyota kata to “mod” the game

Measure the impact

Monitor flow experience

VISUALIZE PROGRESS

Story mapping> quest maps

Pairing charts > character profiles

Build in clear rewards

LEVELING UP AS SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Flow experience supported by sustainable pace

Reflect recognition and reputation

Encourage team members to view their job as self improvement

SOFTWARE CRAFTSMANSHIP

Craftsmanship over crap (Uncle Bob)

Apprentice > Journeyman > Master

Kvell and naches emotions (mentoring pride)

ENDGAME

DANGERS

You can’t just spawn a new project after failing

Could depersonalize rather than personalize

No one game can please all

Gaming and misuse of metrics

HOW DO WE CONQUER THIS NEW QUEST?

Use agile and lean principles

Intrinsic then extrinsic

Voluntary participation

Give autonomy to teams

Lightweight (i.e., fun)

FINAL “BOSS” 1. List three things blocking you from gamifying.

2. With a pair, come up with a possible solution for them.

BEFORE YOUR NEXT QUEST

BOOKS

Flow

A Theory of Fun

Total Engagement

Reality Is Broken

Gamestorming

Designing Virtual Worlds

WEB

alistair.cockburn.us

delicious.com/matthew.philip/gamification

smilingfinney.blogspot.com

codingconduct.cc

GG

m p h i l i p @ t h o u g h t w o r k s . c o m

@ m a t t p h i l i p