 and welcome back to Scrum Mastery Challenge. This is episode five of the Agile Coach game show. And so far, we've had a new leader at the end of every episode. And as you can see from the leaderboard here, Paul is currently sitting at the top, albeit by just half a point. In this episode, things are a little bit different because this time our contestants had a little time to think about things before they had to make a decision. This time I gave them 20 pounds each and they had to spend it with one condition, that whatever they bought would significantly increase the agility of a team. Let's start by seeing how Paul went about this challenge. It was tough. It's tougher than I thought, actually. So I considered stationary. So I thought I could just buy some interesting post-its and cork boards. In my opinion, it has an immediate effect on the agility of a team if you give them something more physical, the task boards or that to actually use. But I thought everyone would be doing that. I wanted to do something different. So then I went to a toy shop. I looked at some kind of desktop games for teams to play, to relax their, then mind a bit and look to concentrate on something different. So I looked at there's some air hockey games and there was a speaking Simon with the colors. If they pick the colors and memorize the color of a memory game, I thought I liked that idea. Bear with me. This is called Creepy Hand. Right. This is a game. And what it is, is it, well, I'll show you what it is. Look at here. Ready? Ah! And it points. It does. So I thought that was, I looked at that, I thought, I can see how you could apply that. Okay, I'm listening. Okay. I thought, so if you want a fun way to start a daily stand-up, that's an interesting way. Put that on the table, get people standing up and they have people, it selects the first person at random, it's a bit of fun. And then it comes with some cards as well. So it is, like I said, it is a game when it actually points to you, you have a choice of either a truth, a dare or a forfeit on the card, based on who it's, it's obviously it's for kids. So the first one here says, the question is, when did your last go to bed without cleaning your teeth? Yeah. The dare would be pretend that you are a cow. Okay. And the forfeit is to mime a nursery rhyme. The cards, I thought were just as interesting as the hand, because that made me think of some kind of, either a nice way to start a daily stand-up was something a bit more fun. And you could change, obviously, you could write your own truth, dare and forfeit cards. So that's where I spent my money, Jeff. All right. Well, there you go. A little creepy perhaps, but creative. That's what Paul was going for. So his aim there really was to break the monotony of something that could potentially become a little bit boring and stale for a team and spice it up a little bit. And the cards that went along with it, I think were even more useful. Helping teams get to know each other a little bit more, which for me is a big contributor to real successful, honest, open teamwork. And open collaborative teamwork is the basis of agility. So yeah, pretty good for me, but again, I'm not going to be the one judging it. I wonder whether our judges will see the same things. Next, let's see what Helen spent her 20 pounds on. It baffled me a bit at first, but then as I sat down and thought about it a little bit more, I thought it was quite obvious and pretty much the things that I bought with me came to my mind straight away. So the first thing that I looked at was bearing a minor 20 pound budget. The first thing I got was straight onto a well-known website and I looked at cork boards. I also looked at white boards, but I realized quite quickly that A, they're expensive and they are kind of like still quite small. You'd given us a 20 pound budget, but actually you shouldn't really need to spend any money if you want to enhance agility within your teams. So I didn't actually spend any money. I had all of these things at home already. And I'd like to think that teams in their general office would have these things. So my first item, masking tape. So with masking tape, I believe that you can create any visualization you want, put it onto a wall, and teams will be able to put their work up there. My second object, post-it notes. So once you've got your board up and running, you can map out what your work is. And to do that, you're gonna need my third object, which is a Sharpie. I've actually written something on the top of my first post-it note. This is one of my favorite websites, and that's RetroMap. And that's some place that I always recommend to Scrum Masters or anyone, if they want to get good inspiration on how to run fun and creative retros, they can just go to this website. So visualization is absolutely key in ensuring that the teams understand what's going on. It also shows you lots of patterns. It shows you lots of dysfunctions. And it shows you where the things are that you need to fix first. Visualize the work, and then you can see the problems from there. So Helen nailed her colors to the master visualization there, trying to keep things simple, just like she did in the food challenge last time. It served her well then, so why not now? Every agile team will get some benefit from being able to visualize what they're doing. And with tape, post-it notes and Sharpies, arguably the staple diet of any agile team, that's what they'll be able to do. So no matter where they are, visualize the progress, be able to make some changes, make some improvements, become more agile. I can see the thinking. Will our judges see it that way though? Can't wait to see what crazy idea Sam's got for how to spend his 20 pounds. It's quite difficult to tell, because I think improving the agility of a team is actually quite contextual. So what would be good for one team, might not, you know, what solves one team's problem might not even be a problem for the other team. So kind of picking warm thing is quite difficult. So initially I actually thought, well, what books I think actually embody the ideas, high level principles or kind of philosophies about how to function well. And there were three books, Who Moved My Cheese, which is obviously a great book about how to deal with change positively, right? And that's a fantastic book. The second one would be Zen and the Art of Multi-Cycle Maintenance. I've read that book about 10 times and every time I've read it, I've been able to apply it to different circumstances. And then the final one for, to be a good team, and if you want an example of how to function well in a team, I don't think you can do better than Chris Hadfield's and Astronaut's guide to life on Earth, is pretty much a de facto guide on how the right way, the right mindset to be effective in a team. Yeah, the other thing I considered is I'm a big fan of oblique problem solving and to do that, you need a space away from your working space. And I found sort of that water cooler environment. So I actually found a mini water cooler. That was only like 10 pounds. So what I realized is I could create an entire space for this. So I thought I'd then get like a little whiteboard for five pounds. Just so that any ideas, any ideas that come from these oblique conversations can get kind of recorded just to make sure they don't get forgotten. I could also then afford a packet of Jaffa cakes. And the final thing was a poster of logical fallacies. Just so you can, when you have an idea, you can just make sure you're not committing the logical, the sin of, you know, thinking about it rationally. So, and then finally, Jaffa, I got what I got. Okay. Right. Which is, and I've decided it's not my job to pick what the team should buy to improve their agility. It's not my job to do that. So I've got 20 pound coins. I'll tell you why I've got 20 pound coins. So first of all, they can take this and buy whatever they want, right? The buy whatever they want to improve their agility with that remit, which means they can fail and learn from it. Or they can buy something that will allow them to succeed. And then finally, before they buy it, I think they could do the penny game just to show the value of small batch sizes. And additionally, because I don't have any receipts to give you, you've not got any comprehensive documentation you have to deal with. So I think we find that is perfect. Self-compartment, ladies and gentlemen. Trust Sam. Well, that could be seen as ingenious or I suppose it could be seen as lazy. He knows, and you probably know as well that I'm a big fan of asking the team. But I wonder how our judges will view that. We'll find out soon. But what we can't argue about really is his argument about the contextual nature of this. What one team would see as an improvement in their journey towards agility, another team might not even have us a problem. So addressing each situation on its merits, I think, can't be argued with. Next up, it's Christina. I wonder how she has spent her 20 pounds. Let's find out. I found it quite hard because for me, the word significantly is a pretty important word, but it means different things to different people. So yeah, I found it quite tough. One of the things that I've realized is food is usually a really good way to get teams to just talk, collaborate, just have a conversation and just breaks the ice every now and then. But I couldn't bring a box of donuts. So I thought they might go off by the time I came here. So yeah, but food was my first thought. So the first thing I thought about buying was, it's like these little booklets that say funky things on it like I love lists or yay. You know, they learn something new and they want to write it down. Often they get to write it on the poster and I thought, oh, buying each of them maybe like a book that they can have, they can write something down and could be kind of cool. But I thought that's one more thing they have to write. And then, you know, when you go to construction sites and you've got signs which say do not enter or men at work, there was a really cool one which basically said, do not disturb. And I thought that could be kind of cool because when the teams really trying to get their head in the game and you know, they're really sort of up against it. And it's putting a sign up just to give everyone around just some context or some awareness of, you know, these guys are at it. But then I thought that would that really help? And I considered buying a box of story cubes because I really think they are a fun way to just engage the team, especially when it comes to retrospectives. But that was too predictable. So I spent my money on a small little trivia box which is the ultimate science quiz. Okay. Really random. So one of the things that I've come to learn is getting the team to step out of their current environment really helps them just think differently. And usually when I know I've got writer's block or I can't think of an answer to a question, doing something that's completely random and not connected to my work really helps me suddenly just go, ah, there's the answer or just gets my brain, the juices in my brain flowing. So a team can use them in many different ways. I like to kind of leave things on the table because I think people's curiosity gets the better of them. But we could potentially use this in a retro literally do nothing that's related to software development or talking about the sprint, just using it for the team to just have complete and utter downtime. Well, a wide range of ideas there from food to signage to notebooks to prompts for storytelling. Just like Paul, she was a little bit worried about being predictable. So went for something abstract to try and stimulate some creative thought process within the team and break them out of their paradigm. Quite random, I suppose. But an interesting perspective. Wonder whether her gamble will pay off with the judges. Finally, we have Freya. I wonder what a teenager who's never actually worked in an office before will think of to make a team more agile. Fun. Yeah. I went for lots of little things instead of one big. I got this big pink pig. Big pink pig. Because for lots of reasons, actually, because if I walked into work and I saw a big pink pig, I'm going to be happier and think this is going to be a fun day. So like a boring day. And when the team has an idea, that anyone on the team has an idea, they can use my giant pencil to write their idea on a post-it note. And if they're not a particularly brave person that wants to sort of say their idea in front of everyone, they can just write it and put it in the pig so that then everyone's ideas can get used. And if they put an idea in the paper, they can have a chocolate bite at my door thing. And then there's a calendar so that they can write what needs doing and how long it's going to take for each thing that they need to get done. Post-it note, because it was a bit simple and you can put your ideas in Mr. Pig, however you fit best. And I was going to buy a sort of a statue of gold trophy so that whoever ideas get used can have the trophy. But then the point of having the pig is that you don't know whose ideas, so when they get discussed with the group, there's no name and shame if it's not a great idea so that there wasn't favourites when I didn't get that prize. Oh, focusing on making the boring fun, increasing participation and engagement, rewarding ideas, more than productivity. This, coupled with a calendar to help teams cute themselves accountable, is an interesting way of spending the money. I think I'd like to see a big pink pig when I came into work as well. Well, all I can say is I'm glad I'm not judging these. We've got a spread of judges from around the world again and they didn't know anything about this challenge. They certainly didn't know who was involved or who bought what. So let's see what they make of what our contestants chose to spend their 20 pounds on. The entry that I picked was the 20-point coins and then let the team decide because I think it really helps the team to take the ownership of what they're doing. So by giving them the money, they're gonna know best what they want to do to help improve their agility. It depends on the challenges that they're having at that time, what's the right thing for them to be using. The second option in that, I chose the piggy bank. Giving people just that space to go, okay, if you come up with an idea, don't hold it off or don't try to remember just until the retrospective. Here somewhere that you can write it down and capture it. I really do like the idea of the piggy bank and the chocolates just to reward people because that's a nice thing to do. The third one that I picked was the brainiac game. I like things that sort of put the team outside of their normal day-to-day. So sparking the creativity, you know, I'm sure could lead you up out of camaraderie. So that would be my top three choices in this. Hi everyone, this is Jo from South Africa and I'm here to judge the Agile Purchase Challenge. In first place, I have the 20 pound coins. I thought it was a really cool idea, take it to the team, let the team decide what is gonna help them to be more agile or increase their agility. Number two for me was the creepy hand. I have come to realize that the quality of the interactions between the team members is directly proportional to the quality of whatever the team outputs. And so figuring out how to learn to be a little bit vulnerable with each other will significantly increase the level of interaction and the ability to conflict in a constructive way. The green tape and the sticky notes got my third vote. I thought that this would be a totally awesome way to help a team be more agile if they didn't have a stand up order, if they weren't doing anything of that sort already. My fourth vote went to the Brainiac card. And finally the Ideas Bank, those are all my votes. Thanks very much to everybody and hope you have a great day. So I've been asked to judge and rate the entries for the Agile Purchase Challenge. My number five in this round is the creepy hand because let's face it, the hand is creepy. I'm not sure how that would help with Agile. Number four would be the green tape and post-its. I'm hoping that most every Agile team already has this. That's like giving a team air. My number three is the 20 pounds of coin. Although this is unique and it lets them self-organize, it seems like this team kind of phoned it in and said, we don't have an original idea, let the team decide. So this would be my number three, okay? My number two would be the game Brainiac trivia. I love the idea of inspiring ideas and letting people kind of learn more about each other. So it seems like this might be a good choice in there. Which leaves my number one, which would be the Ideabank. So not only is this helping teams to think about what the next idea might be, but it encourages them to do that and track that. So it would be a really, really nice thing to have. Hello, this is Adam Weisbart, an Agile coach base just off of Seattle, coming in at number five. I am going to say that giving your team 20 pounds and letting them spend it as they will might seem Agile, but also seems to me to be frankly a bit lazy. So I'm going to give that the lowest ranking of five. For number four, I am going to go with tape, post-its and a Sharpie. Well, those are definitely things all good Agilists should have. I also think all good Agilists should have them. Coming in at number three is the Ideabank. This one, I liked well enough. I think the reason it got a bronze in this competition is that I did quite like that the team was thinking about how to get more shy people to participate with the team. Coming in for the silver, I am going to go with the creepy hand. The creepy hand game, while I thought was something different and useful, it was also creepy and it scared me. Coming in with the gold is the Brainiac trivia. I loved how much thought was given to this and how it could be used in many different ways, either over a cup of tea in a retrospective, used to start a daily scrum. I thought scattering them about for the team was a fun way to get interaction with the team in a way that wasn't specifically about work but could certainly help you in your work and that it would break you out of normal patterns. So for the gold, Brainiac trivia. Hi, this is Karen Greaves here. When I first saw the question, I thought, oh, what would I do? And I decided that what I would probably pick is some kind of game to help people kind of build relationships and kind of connect. And so I was really excited to see that there were two games that were chosen. The one was Brainiac, which I really liked because it kind of allows creative thinking and it can just kind of spark ideas and leaving cards like that around might mean that the team picked them up whenever they kind of need them. The creepy hand truth or dare game, I actually don't like so much because it feels a little bit like it, it forces people to speak and truth or dare might be a little bit risky for some people. So yeah, so my picks are first pick, first place would be for Brainiac. Second, I think it would be the stationary, especially because it's got a link to RetroMath and I think all good teams start with having really good retrospectives and I highly recommend RetroMath. Third, I think I really like the idea of letting the team decide what they would do with the money. That's kind of an agile principle. So letting the team make their own choice, I thought that was cool. Fourth place that gives the idea, Piggy Bank, I quite like that as an idea, but I didn't really like the chocolate as an incentive. And finally, as I mentioned, creepy hand is just a little too creepy for the workplace. So that is fifth place for me. A huge thank you there to Ashlyn, to Joe, to Howard, to Adam and to Karen, especially as they didn't have a lot of context for what they were judging. Those views of our judges have now been translated into points and as you can see, our judges didn't really appreciate the simplicity of Helen's idea and I guess Paul's hand was just a little too creepy. But Christina wins her second challenge of the series. And that means we have another change at the top of the leaderboard with Christina and Sam sharing the lead. We're now over halfway through scrum mastery challenge and we're in a situation where all of our contestants are still in touch and the good or a bad week for any of them can change everything. Well, I'm afraid that brings us to the end of another episode. I hope you enjoy it and I'm sure you'll appreciate all the suggestions that our contestants came up with there from toys, to books, to games, to even asking the team, lots of ways that you could potentially increase the agility of your team. If you've got any ideas, some cheap, easy ways of increasing the agility of your team, please share them in the comments. I hope to see you next time on scrum mastery challenge for episode six. In the meantime, good luck with your scrum mastery challenges and to get us to done done, here are the credits.