Pushing Pennies: Playing with the Principles of Product Development Flow
Lean and agile concepts can sometimes be counterintuitive, but the right game or exercise can effectively demonstrate those concepts, providing a practical basis for conversation and learning. Being able to talk beyond anecdote and theory and actually demonstrate why something works is a powerful statement. In this workshop, Bill DeVoe will execute some games you can take back to your organizations to help them understand some basic lean and agile concepts regarding optimization of flow and throughput. Through these activities, we’ll demonstrate the value of a prioritized backlog, optimized batch sizes, limiting work in progress (WIP), and more. This workshop will consist of two primary exercises: a version of the Name Game to demonstrate the benefits of constraining WIP, and a longer session that uses the Modified Scrum Penny Game to demonstrate the principles of product development flow, including preferring small batches over large ones, limiting WIP, and prioritizing our work by value. Join Bill to explore these fun new ways to teach lean and agile concepts.
Bill DeVoe has been working in IT for more than twenty-five years and in agile for almost twenty, working with everything from small startups to Fortune 5 companies. He's coached and trained local teams, distributed teams, managers, and executives in lean, agile, Scrum, kanban, and scaled agile topics, and he's led transformations at the team and enterprise levels. Bill has presented and spoken at many conferences on a variety of topics, including agile transformations with HR and finance, distributed teams, and transforming a team to kanban and Scrumban.