CONTINUOUS PLAY @mattphilip #AGSTL14 The Future of Agile
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