Agile Wheel

This fun game can be used by coaches to teach key focus areas of Agile, assess teams / projects on these key aspects and help teams to make improvement plans. It leads to discussions about challenges being faced by teams and good practices that can be learned from other teams and organizations.

It can be used for individuals, teams and even large groups of more than hundred people at one time.

This game is based on the wheel of life used in life coaching. It helps to visualize the implementation of all the Agile key focus areas at once. By providing a visual representation of all these key aspects at glance, the wheel helps participants to better understand which of their project areas are flourishing and which ones need more work.

Each participant is given a copy of the sheet “Your Agile Wheel”. It contains a circle divided into eight segments representing key Agile focus areas. Each segment has a grade of 1 to 10.  I use the below focus areas but these can be customized.

  1. Requirement clarity and change
  2. Continuous customer interaction
  3. Quality focus
  4. Self-organized empowered teams
  5. Transparent status tracking
  6. Extreme automation
  7. Scaling
  8. Organizational Agility

Game steps:

  1. One by one, the facilitator explains each key focus area, and each participant ranks the area on a scale of 1 to 10 by making an arc in that segment of the circle. I have found that it is better for participants to hear the explanation before giving a rating, otherwise they tend to overlook important aspects of each area. The attached slide deck can be used for this explanation with customization if necessary.
  2. After each participant has their complete wheel in front of them, they analyze their wheel and their strong / weak areas. They note down the good practices that are giving them high ratings, and the improvements that they can make in the weak areas.
  3. These results are shared in larger groups and then individuals or teams can brainstorm on action items on how they can improve their Agile maturity. A prioritization method like dot voting can be used by the team to identify immediate actions, and other action items can be stored in an improvements backlog.

11 thoughts on “Agile Wheel – A Coaching Tool”

  1. Hi Anu,

    When I tried to open it with my PowerPoint application, the 1st response was that it had trouble reading the file and did I want PowerPoint to repair it. When I clicked on yes, PowerPoint responded that it could not open the file. Not sure what is going on here but I am keen to see what you done.

    Thanks,
    John

    1. Hi John,
      Thanks for checking out the game.
      I just checked and I am able to download the PowerPoint file and open it without any errors. Could it be a problem with your computer?
      I will send it directly to your email.
      Thanks,
      Anu

  2. I downloaded the ppt. When I tried to open it with my PowerPoint application, the 1st response was that it had trouble reading the file and did I want PowerPoint to repair it. When I clicked on yes, PowerPoint responded that it could not open the file. Not sure what is going on here but I am keen to see what you done.

    Thanks,
    John

    1. An Agile team needs to be in close touch with their customer(s). It helps the Agile team to understand what the customer needs and to get a quick feedback on their work. It also helps customers to understand the constraints that the dev teams face. The product development becomes a joint effort by the customer and the team. Details are also give in the presentation attached with the write-up.

    1. Thanks for the comment.

      Yes, the Agile wheel helps us to see where we are. The actions we take based on that will be determined by the specific needs of the team.

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