Games become more and more important to help people understand the underlying mindset. They help us try new things and experiment in a safe environment. The question is: what makes a good agile game and how to develop one? Before we developed the game I only knew some models about how to develop them, but it was still mostly an abstract concept for me. In this session I want to tell the story of how we developed the Kanban Pizza Game.

1. On agile games and how to develop one
The journey of creating the Kanban Pizza Game
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

2. Games help to experience new concepts
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

3. Our journey to
the Kanban Pizza Game
Franz Ivancsich Ralf Kruse
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

4. Design a game - My starting point: Play4Agile
• Used games before and loved it ...
..., but never thought on develop one
• Game Design Model helped a lot[1]
• First try building one at Play4Agile failed ...
..., but got an idea how to build one
[1] by Don McGreal & Michael McCullough
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

5. A while later ....
we worked on our Kanban Training
• Points we wanted to improve:
• too much magic ... like questions for formulas to find initial WiP-Limits
• lack of understanding of the ownership off the board/system
• Kanban Games we know focus on a defined process/board
• ..., so that such games didn‘t help to understand
• ownership of the system
• Kanban starts where you are
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

6. We needed a deadline
The Kanban Challenge
Kanban is easier than Scrum! It is said to be fast and simple! But is that true?
Our Kanban Challenge shows you what Kanban really is about. Why it is an
appropriate tool for continuous learning, how it supports continuous process
improvement and how it lets emerge what normally happens under the hood.
Join us into Kanban-land and our interactive Kanban Challenge. Success, failures,
learning and especially a lot of fun are guaranteed!
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

7. Back to the model
Our Learning Objectives for the game
• We talked about our Learning objectives, but never wrote them down.
• If we had they would look like the following
• experience the journey from an existing current process to a Kanban System
• Visualizing the workflow, Limit WiP, measure and optimize the flow
• pull principle
• ....
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

8. Iterating - The early versions
• First idea - Textual Support Scenario to a board
• textual scenario on paper as starting point
• creating a board based on the scenario taking a text about a support department
• simulate the work based on the board
• Our learnings
• Too close to actual work, prevents a playful learning experience
• Second idea - Pizza delivery process
• Same idea other scenario
• Our learnings
• process is too much defined
• gap between work and board design is too big
• still not playful enough
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

9. Here come the pizza pieces
• Integrating a pizza creation process based on paper in the game
• Thanks to google search for showing us a origami pizza piece :-)
• Our learnings
• We can skip the scenario in the game by defining constraints with the materials
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

10. Time for more Feedback (Did we feel ready ... No)
• Feedback helped a lot!
Thanks to @oedel @alex235 @sven_kr @lasseziegler @scharlau for being our guinea pigs :-)
• Early playing is essential, otherwise there is a risk to overload the game
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

11. Tampere goes Agile: First public session
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

12. Kanban Pizza Game
by agile42 is licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.
Further Informations:
www.agile42.com/training/kanban-pizza-game
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

13. Summary on the Kanban Pizza Game
• A great game to start teaching Kanban
• Clear focus on creation of the Kanban System
• There are definitely other games with different learning objectives
(your choice of the game depends on what you want to learn)
• Great starting point for our trainings
• Played in lots of different places by us and others
• Game is shared under Creative Commons, you can use it too ;-)
• Lot‘s of ideas how to extend the game
• The game didn‘t stand alone and needs debriefing
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

14. Summary on Developing an Agile Game
• Model is a great thinking frame [1]
• Keep a clear focus on learning objectives
• Don‘t boil the ocean
• Some idea sounds nice in the first time
• Early Feedback is essential
• Distance of the game to actual work enables playful learning experience
[1] by Don McGreal & Michael McCullough
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.

15. Developing great learning games needs
focus, conceptualization, creativity and early feedback
agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2012.