The Game

“Product Owner Challenge” – Introduction

“Product Owner Challenge” – is a new agile game with Lego bricks. It supports organisations in transitioning from Waterfall to Agile and illustrates the agile mindset to a waterfall-driven product development culture: stop micro-management and communicate face-to-face clear objectives, requirements, and product vision.
The product description is in one part of the room, PO and DevTeam in the other. PO is not allowed to show it to DevTeam, but can inspect the plan as often it's needed - PO has to "walk & talk" – real challenges for traditional-minded product development departments.

Challenge your Product Development (PO) team!

To communicate with DevTeams as clear as possible,
To describe the requirements and product vision to DevTeams as precise as needed,
To micro-manage the project or to allow the DevTeam self-organisation,
To handle locally distributed DevTeams appropriately,
To manage the product development project waterfall- or agile driven like.

Background idea of version 1.0: Show in a waterfall-like mindset the impediments and resulting consequences.

Play @POChallenge and contribute your ideas, feedback, and comments in our Uservoice forum platform - or stay informed and join our mailing list.

Objectives

Target Audience – Product Owner, Scrum Master, Product Dev Manager/Leads
Game Objectives – Share product vision and instructions to the team as precise as possible to build the product right. Communicate (requirements) as clear as possible.

Learning Points – (1) Co-located collaboration leads to faster results and better quality; (2) Even precise, clear and distinct as possible, verbal communication alone is never precise, clear and distinct enough; (3) Too detailed instructions hinder creativity and turn fast to micro-management.

Playing instructions – PO and DevTeam are in separate rooms or in one room separated by distance. Only PO has building instructions and is not allowed to show it to DevTeam. – PO has to communicate!

Product mgmt (PO) decides which product (model) of the Lego kit the DevTeam has to build
PO has the building description
DevTeam has Lego bricks only, and no building description
PO is not allowed to show construction plan or photos to DevTeam;
PO is allowed to inspect the plan as often she he needs to.

Game Setting – “Communicate your Vision right!”

Material used – Lego 3in1 Creator sets. They allow to build three different models with one kit; a game will be finished in reasonable time (30min), and they are inexpensive.

Download User Stories ready to play. This user stories are written for LEGO Creator Series 6910 (Sports Car), 31000 (Pick-up truck), and 5761 (Digger, front loader).
The PO can share the product vision/requirements in using high level written user stories instead or in parallel to the LEGO building instructions. However, PO can go back to LEGO instruction (hidden from the team) as often he wants to – "asking the customer". Using the user stories, PO and team plan together with the team the sequence of what is built ("sprint planning").

Game Setting

Debriefing examples

„How easy/difficult was your task?” – „What were your emotions?”
„What made your task easy/difficult?”
„Were you stressed?” – „Why?”
„How was the communication with DevTeam?”
„How often did you get back to view the instructions again?”
„How was it to be a micro-manager?” – „To give the DevTeam trust and laissez-faire?”
„When is micro-management/waterfall appropriate and when agile management?”
„What were the experiences you made with locally distributed teams?”
„How many deviations are between the final product (model) and the product vision (building instruction)?”
....

„How easy/difficult was your task?” – „What were your emotions?”
„What made your task easy/difficult?”
„Were you stressed?” – „Why?”
„How was the communication with PO?”
„How often did you re-ensemble bricks or parts during the building process?”
„How was it to be micro-managed?” – „To be trusted and to get laissez-faire?”
„When is micro-management/waterfall appropriate and when agile management?”
„What were the experiences you made with locally distributed teams?”
„How could the PO improve her instructions?”
„Did you understand your tasks/objectives at all times?” – „When you didn’t?”
....

Playing Results - Examples

I introduced the “Product Owner Challenge Game” at the unconference Play4Agile - #P4A14 (Rückersbach, Germany). I ran two open space sessions for the game.
I thank all participants for their help, comments, and suggestions to improve this game.

Without any order, the participants of the workshops played two scenarios:

micro-management vs agile/feature-driven development
1:1 identiy of vision and model vs. business value

The workshop results are shown below: Playing Result 1 and Playing Result 2.

Playing Result 1: The micro-managing PO

Playing Result 2: Battle Micro-Management vs. Agile

PO gave more feature-driven requirement descriptions...

...whereas the second PO did more micro-management:

Game Variations

At the unconference Play4Agile - #P4A14 I I ran two open space session with @POChallenge: The participants came up with the following suggestions:

Timebox the construction process to less than 30 min.
Introduce penalties for:
PO – for each time stepping back to inspect instructions
DevTeam – for each time to re-ensemble bricks or parts during the building process
Introduce a metric and penalties for model deviations from the initial vision.
Use pre-defined user stories as equivalent to Lego building instructions.
Run a battle between waterfall/micro-management and agile/feature-driven development
Introduce a “logistic/material” bottleneck: a third-party governs all the bricks; PO or DevTeam have to acquire bricks for the next construction steps by the “supplier”.
...

All suggestions and ideas are filed and managed in Uservoice forum.

Contribute your own ideas!

Product Owner Challenge - SlideDesk

Product Owner Challenge game from Michael Tarnowski

Product Owner Challenge - User Stories ready to play from Michael Tarnowski

Lego 3in1 sets

These Lego 3in1 sets are to play the POChallenge game.

Unfortunately LEGO dropped the 3in1 hard-cover boxes out of store and sells only card-boxes instead,.

Licensing, and your further engagement

@POChallenge is free to be distributed under the following conditions:

...you are allowed to download and to share @POChallenge with others as long as
...you please full credit me: Michael Tarnowski, Plays-in-Business.com,
...you do not change in any way the basic settings of the game [i.e. building description (BD) is separated from PO and DevTeam; the PO has only limit access to BD and has to communicate all details to DevTeam].
...you do not use @POChallenge commercially:
4.1. ...however, you are allowed to use @POChallenge as like other agile games within commercial consultancy. In this case please share your expierences on the website bit.ly/POChallenge on "Contribute" or "Feedback".
4.2. ...however, you are not allowed to offer a commercial service or workshop solely relying on @POChallenge without a commercial agreement with Michael Tarnowski, Plays-in-Business.com.

Your Engagement:

Play the game and give feedback at the website: Blog.
Please share your contributing ideas at the website.
Support marketing of the game with Tweets #POChallenge.
Be informed: mailing list.

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If you want to hire me: Agile Coaching & Transition/Adoption of Waterfall to Agile – or Software Process Improvement (CMMI, ISO15504 / AutomotiveSPiCE) – or Plays in Business: Agile Games, Serious Games, Innovation Games, LEGO Serious Games? – Please drop me a note.