Flipping Agile Pizza

An online mashup of Ralf Kruse’s Kanban pizza and the penny flip game. The initial version was distributed to my network and I have seen at least one variation. This is the MVP version, which has been improved and can be run as a 45-60 minute workshop. MVP instructions How to run it: Imagine you’re a chef. In front of you is a table and…

The Lean-STAR Game

Timing: 15 minutes Overview: This is a short game to explain why WIP is bad. It has so many variants, one of which is the lean simulation game with paper airplanes by Jeff Patton. Instead of building airplanes, we connect five dots of a star. Resources: Print 10 copies per team from this Star-Connect pdf file. Steps: Form teams of 5’s. Each team member is responsible to connect…

Sudokuban: A Kanban in action game in puzzles

Timing: This game is normally done in a forty-five minute time block: 10 minutes upfront for instructions, 20 minutes for the game, and 15 minutes for the debrief. Overview: The Sudokuban game is a quick 45 minute game to practice Kanban in a safe to fail environment where constraints have been setup to swiftly force work in progress limits to be hit. Built using pre-constructed sudoku puzzles and mimicking…

Lego Flow Game

Timing: 60-90 minutes Overview: The Lego Flow Game is a fun exercise to compare and contrast different approaches to processes, with respect to how work flows. The aim of the game is to build Lego Advent Calendar items, with a defined workflow: finding the next advent calendar number (analysis), finding the matching set of lego pieces (supply), creating the lego item (build) and checking the item…