Timing: 45 minutes

Materials:

Sticky notes (3 different colours), cards,marker, table, tape.

Instructions:

Initial setup: divide the table into 2 section using tape, one section called “To do” the other “Done”. Prepare some sticky notes and place them on the “To do” area. You should have 3 groups each a different colour, don’t need to be the same number of sticky notes each. Every participant has a personal set of rules (on a card), see examples below. Rules are different between participants.

Playing

1- Scrum master presents the goal: to move all the sticky notes from one side to the other.

2- Scrum master assigns the personal set of rules for every participant.

3- First try:

The game starts, scrum master says: day one, and people following their personal rules try to move tricky notes from “To Do” to “Done”. People can’t speak. They have to follow their personal set of rules. Each participant can move one task (sticky note) per “day”.

When everyone is done moving the scrum master indicates we are on day 2 and people move again and so on. Until day 5. Scrum master indicates the sprint is  finished. The team counts how many sticky notes we moved and how many remain.

4- Second try: the same but people can speak. The scrum master introduces the daily meeting. People can speak and figure out how to move the sticky notes following the rules to achieve the goal.

The team plays 5 rows and the scrum master indicates the sprint is finished.

The team counts how many sticky notes we moved and how many remain.

Learning Points:

-When working alone and isolated we think we are optimising while we aren’t.

-Focus on team goal rather than personal goals.

-Collaboration and team work.

-Short term vs long term: the value of learning.

Example rules

Player 1

  • You can’t move pink.
  • You can move yellow.
  • You can move 2 yellow if you ask for help.
  • If you are helping somebody, you can only move orange (if any available). Otherwise you only help, you can’t move orange tasks.
  • On the 2nd and 3rd day you are “stuck” so you don’t move unless somebody ask you what is going on.

Player 2

  • You can’t move yellow
  • You can move pink only asking for help
  • You can move 3 orange if you ask for help.
  • If you say: I want to learn how to move yellow, somebody who can move it can teach you. None moves, but next day you can move yellow.

Player 3

  • You can’t move pink
  • You can move yellow only asking for help
  • If you are helping somebody, the other person moves, not you.

Player 4

  • You can move move all colours
  • You can help to move yellow or pink. If you are helping both move.

11 thoughts on “Daily scrum game”

  1. Hey, Manuel, thanks for the interesting idea. I am planning to try this game with my team.
    Only one question: do we need to have something like tasks written on those colorful stickies, or the color is enough for the purposes of the game?

    Thanks again!

  2. I’d like to use this activity in an upcoming Community of Practice. Does each player move as many post-its as possible during each day? If so, wouldn’t Player 4 have all the post-its moved by the end of Day 5 even if the players are silent?

    1. Hi @Nicola, thank you for your comment.
      During the first row, players can only move one task (or sticky note), so nobody will move all the tickets. Besides that, he can’t move all the sticky notes, as the personal rules prevent it.
      I hope it helps.
      Manuel.

    2. Hi, I always do with the papers clean, no tasks…that is better so people don’t focus on the task but on how is collaboration working or not.
      Let me know how it went!
      Manuel.

  3. Could you clarify a little on each person rules?
    Can people help at any time? Can they help many times?
    Rule 2 and 3 of player one are not clear. When one applies?

    1. Hi Martel, thank you for your comment.
      During the first row: people can’t help since they can’t speak so they can’t ask for help.
      During the second row: people can speak so they can ask for help. Once per “day”.
      Regarding rules 2 and 3 for player one:
      -If you are helping somebody, you can only move orange. Otherwise you only help, don’t move. > means that he can only move orange (if any orange task left) when being asked for help, if nobody is asking for help you can’t move orange. I have clarified this.
      -On the 2nd and 3rd day you are “stuck” so you don’t move unless somebody ask you what is going on.> on the second day he will be “frozen”, on the first row people can’t ask so they will see him not moving and won’t know what is going on. On the second row, somebody (hopefully) will ask what is going on (why aren’t you moving?) and he will be able to move (since was asked what is going on).
      I hope it helps.
      M.

  4. Hi Aladin,
    in my experience you don’t really need to have an exact time for the “days”…just leave the time some time to move the notes and just announce that the day is finished.
    You will see that the time you allow to move the sticky notes doesn’t really make difference when playing, people will see the point anyway.
    Share your feedback when you play!
    Manuel.

  5. This game sounds very good for my team, but there is one thing I don’t get while imagining the game…when exactly is a day finished? You say ‘When everyone is done moving’, but shouldn’t it be a timebox per day to compare the results of both scenarios?

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