 So thank you for coming to this session, everyone. I'm Anand Bagmar. I've been in the quality space for software for about 20 years now. Done various different things with respect to quality, mostly on the testing side of it. But since the past at least five, six years, I've been focused on the overall quality and not just from a testing perspective. And since the last year, I've been doing freelancing in that same regards. One, I got tired of corporate. And second, I thought I could help out better for organizations and teams with the different types of things that I also want to do. So that's about me. My Twitter ID is there. Bagmar Anand, feel free to reach out to me at any point in time. I love having discussions and talking about quality and what can be done to make it better. So enough about me. What we are going to be doing today is we are going to play a game. Has anyone played the game Taboo? Excellent, this is the perfect group. That's what makes the game more fun as well, right? If you've played it before, then what's the fun out of it? Okay, so what is Taboo? It's like dumb shirats. Has everyone played dumb shirats? Anyone not played dumb shirats? Okay, everyone has played dumb shirats. So basically in dumb shirats, what we do is there are teams, two teams, and one person from a team will come up. The other team will tell them what name of a movie to enact. And without speaking, just by actions, you have to guess, that team has to guess the name of the movie, right? That is what dumb shirats is. This is very similar, but it's not the same. We are going to be playing a game called Taboo where you will have, we'll be creating, because of the size of this group, we'll just have one group, but we are going to create two teams within that group. Okay? The rules are very simple. You'll be getting chits like this, which has got words on it. Approximately one minute maximum per word. You cannot, there are two types of words that we have over here. For example, conference, this is the main word. And there's a set of words which are called Taboo words. The person who gets this chit has to speak out to their team and get the team members to get, say the main word, that is conference. But as part of that speaking out, you cannot be using any of these Taboo words. Okay? Clear? This is the difference between dumb shirats and this. Here you can speak, but you cannot speak a certain set of words and you have to get the main words spoken out. Time box yourself, I would say maximum one minute per chit that you have, but the team can decide how fast they really want to do it. And to help me run this, I've got two volunteers who have agreed to help out. So thank you. You just want to introduce yourself quickly. Hi, my name is Jenny Karnakaran. I'm from A&Z and happy to help you. Hello, my name is Harihara Subramani. I'm from Ericsson. I'm happy to help you as well. Thank you very much, Jenny and Hari. Okay, so what I would quickly request you to do is create two teams amongst yourself. Self-organizing teams, just create two teams. And it's best if you're standing up, not sitting, because that will build the energy up and you can get more points, okay? The rules, as I said, one minute per word maximum, no speaking of the word or any Taboo word. You can attempt as many words as you can. There's a lot of opportunity over here. You cannot point or do actions or gestures or draw or hum or say sounds like this word. You cannot be doing those things, okay? Here's the interesting aspect. And this is something new for Hari and Jenny as well. You both decide and decide very quickly what is one rule you want to add on to what we've added over here, okay? This is a rule of your choice. And you can introduce it at any point you want during the course of the game as well. Okay? 10 points for correct guess. So scorekeeping is going to be important. 10 points for correct guess. Minus five for breaking the rule, okay? If you speak out any of the Taboo words, for example, or hum or gesture, it's minus five. And have fun. This is a very well insulated soundproof room. So you can create as much noise as you want. Show your energy, show your passion. Have fun. But remember, you're doing all this to win something. The prize, it better be good. It will be good. Yes, it will be good. It depends if, how well you win though, okay? So rules clear, okay? So here are the set of words. Over to Hari and Jenny to start off with this. I'm going to keep time. Let's say we've got it's 1240 right now. Let's start with 10 minutes and see how much energy we are able to build up. No, it is two teams competing against each other, okay? So what is this team called? Come up with the name quick. That team, Phoenix, Ace, Phoenix and Ace, okay? So Phoenix and Ace are competing against each other. You're taking one word, giving it to Phoenix. Ace can be a silent participant or they can do what you do in Damsharaj, right? Or Antakshari, right? And the next set will go to Ace. And likewise Phoenix can do what they want to do, okay? But you're competing against each other one set at a time for these, yeah? You can go over there in between them and, okay? Phoenix starts first, okay, excellent. Yeah, so for example, okay, she's coming up, your name? Rashmi, okay, so first one is trial round, okay? Let's do first as a trial round. So Rashmi has come in, she's got a set and she's going to try and get Phoenix team to say the word. Ace, you do what you think is best. Eventually, top scorer wins between two. No, you have to tell your team. You have to tell your team. Hold it in front so you know if she's saying the taboo word or not, right? Yeah, you have to make sure either of them know what you're talking about. Yes, okay, start? Okay, here's a trial round, let's start. No, they can, okay? She tried, the word was estimation. She tried to get her team to speak up and say estimation. She can speak whatever she wants, as long as it's not any of the taboo words or it sounds like or it rhymes with those kinds of things. We don't want to be doing that. You don't, that's why the captains of Valentasia are here to keep track of it, okay? Yes, but now, but now, okay? So in this case, she would have got 10 points, it was a trial round, good try, good try, good try. Okay, okay, do you want to give them 10 points? Okay, so that's what, now you have, you're competing against each other. Next time A's team comes up and you're going to do the same. Okay, now just a quick observation, just saying what, how you want to handle it. You gave them a very nice environment for her to talk. Do you want to continue in that fashion? It's your choice, okay? Okay, so let's see what, let's start off, let's do it. Okay, all right, so who wants to go first? Okay, all right, who wants to come and look at the board? Make sure you're keeping track of the taboo words, you know. How you can come over here? Okay, I'll just pass it straight for you. You're just saying you don't trust the captains, okay? Okay, that's fine. No, from teenage, huh? Come on. Building, building. Building? Building, building, building, building, building, building. It's a brahomalic statement, okay? Okay, the board. Okay, what do you mean? Finger, finger. What do we have? Drum, drum. Finger, finger, finger. Okay, okay. Okay, what do you mean? Why would you do this? It's so easy, but. No, no, no, no. I think so. They had a good strategy. You think what's the problem? Like, it's not, it's like it's not. Yes? Put it down, sir. Okay. Did we have fun? Now we can go. Okay. So first of all, thank you everyone for being sporty and especially thanks to Jenny and Hari for doing, uh, running this. Okay. But I'm sure, uh, the agile India conference didn't select this talk just because you're going to play a game, right? There has to be something at least I had to put something on the proposal to say, yes, there's some learning out of it. Let's, let's try to see if there was some learning. Okay. So first of all, I would like Hari and Jenny to say what was their experience in running this particular game because it was on the fly for them as well. They had no idea about this before. Okay. So what did you observe and what did you learn out of this? One more. Okay, Jenny, do we need a mic or it's okay? Everyone can hear, right? Being one as team. Okay. So I needed a mic. Okay. So how to, uh, the teaming, how to be the teaming culture and, um, how to support each other when you're in the same team. And, uh, but another thing what I observed is that, um, the listening team Phoenix, we still have to get to that. First, let's talk about learning. Then we'll get to the prizes out of it. Okay. The one good thing which we learned is we did a trial first and from that, uh, we, we started really a good thing, which was the, the gaining point for us. Yeah. The trial one. Initially it was a uncomfortable taking part, but, uh, as it, as the time went on, it was comfortable with the team. I think, uh, as a team plan, uh, we all had a proper sync, uh, between us, like, uh, even, uh, you know, when the other team was, uh, playing, we wanted to distract them. So, but same thing we observed when we are playing, they were also distracting, but not to the level that how we are distracting. So it's like, correct. So that's, that was our team plan. Like we need to have a more trouble makers. So our team Phoenix. So I observed that we were self-organizing and also the way we were motivating each other teamwork. Though we didn't know each other, we had a common goal of winning the game. I think that was one thing which you identified. How and how much you are thinking when you get something. It's a thinking power. Yeah. Yes. We can see creativity. Yeah. Uh, I might add a couple of things actually. So, uh, noticed is we have adopted very fast. We were very diverse. Still we were a team and we actually learned from our mistakes and actually still want a lot of stuff. Right. So that was my notice. I didn't get the chance to play, but what I observed is people were energetic to the fullest. I found all of them were energetic to the fullest. I'll wear the devils hat, uh, to be honest, I found it way too chaotic to be engaged. And, uh, I didn't find it very effective after, I mean, I didn't find it a very effective way to do it. I just had a fun. It's a fun thing. I observed pay attention. I think I just enjoyed it. I didn't pay much attention to anything else. So what I realized is there are different roles. So the people who went and represented the team and the people who could guess it, these are two different roles and different styles of people could fare well at both these. Back to his point, I think we self-organized based on what we were good at. So we figured out which part of, you know, the group we wanted to be within the team and played that role. Okay. Okay. I have a bunch of points actually. Okay. I think he's, if we put more rules, it will, it will make things very complex because in between we have added a few more roles. And, uh, yeah, sometimes rules, I'm talking. Okay. Sometimes, uh, other team, uh, rules, if we put more rules, it will become more complex. So yeah, sometimes other can, other team can, uh, easily understand something would, uh, which we are saying, uh, maybe they are more focused on our team, what they are doing. So like one of, uh, uh, our mate, she guessed quickly immediately, but I just showed, but, uh, that time she suddenly stopped it. And later she spelled it out. So like, like an order, uh, the team, we should be cross functional. Sometimes they can help us. Uh, if we put more pressure, we do, uh, something, what we should not do, what we are, what we supposed not to do. Like one minute pressure is there. So that's why in between, even though we, we saw some rules, like we should not use this tab words, but, uh, we tend to use it because of the pressure. So, okay. Okay. Uh, if we want to find alternatives, then, uh, we should be a good thinker. Like, uh, uh, we should not use these words. We, we need to use alternative things like alternative way of working or alternative something. So we should be like, uh, innovative and we should think more. Great. Great. That's a good one. And yeah, we had fun together from my point of view. I also had more fun. And, uh, the point is that how fast we can react to the, uh, within a short, short span of time, uh, react to the change, uh, and then come up, uh, exactly the correct way. That means correct way in the sense, uh, uh, your result would be perfect. Yeah. Make sense. So thanks everyone for sharing. Anything else anyone would like to add? I think when we are playing, everyone are doing like interpretation, assuming guessing. So I may guess something, but the other person or the team may guess something. So there are a lot of other perspective that comes into picture. And that's how you get the answer. Assumption perspectives, uh, very important points. Let me just write it down before I forget. Cool. Now, if we look at this list, it's a pretty big list. Okay. Very quickly though, uh, before I get to the next, uh, last part, Jenny, what's the score like 80 and 60 out of that? Uh, so, uh, how many minus points are also there for each of these teams? So the team which got 80, don't tell the team name. The team which got 80, how many minus points did they get? So minus five minus 10. So 80 and minus 10 for that team. Okay. For the other team. Okay. 90 minus 10. Okay. Got it. So what's the overall six 80 and 60, but it's 90 and minus 10 and 75 and minus 15. Correct. So if we take a, uh, do this calculation, right? If we count this as a total team score, how much is it? It's 140. Correct. 90 plus 75. If we just focus on the positives, how much is it? 165, 165. What does that mean? Together you can achieve more, right? Very well said together. You can achieve more. I know this was a game. It was intentional. A lot of these things that we spoke about, right? The chaos and the changing of the rules, uh, that was intentional. It was by design to incorporate that into the game. But if you really think about it, I'll increase the font again, a little bit. How many of these learnings do we see or observations do we see in a workplace as well? Given your past experiences, maybe current experiences where you are or where you might have been or what you might have heard from your friends, colleagues, or read about in the industry, uh, maybe it's on glass door or anywhere, wherever, right? Does any of these learnings seem not related to work as well? If we focus on not just our team versus the other team, you very well summarize. Are you right? Together we can achieve more. It's not about my team winning and delivering on time with quality. There is value in we delivering together as all teams involved to deliver that product to our business, to our users. So what I really want you to take away from this, right? Whether it is personal life, a game or work, first of all, as long as you're having fun, everything becomes positive. You start enjoying, you start working better as team. You start being more creative, innovative, thinking outside the box, making sure we are able to win together. In this case, together was the Phoenix team or the ACE team that was there. But we really need to change our perspectives. And that's one great thing that I think agile has brought together or any variant of agile that has brought together, right, is break down the walls. It's not about dev versus QA versus product versus any other role. How can we work together as cross-functional? That also is something that came up over here, right? How can we work together with different perspectives to achieve the goal together and avoid surprises? Okay. So I would like to leave you with that thought. And I hope you had a great time playing this game and you'll be able to take these and apply some aspects of these probably in your personal life or work life as well. Thank you very much. If there are any questions or thoughts, comments, feedbacks, I would be very happy to hear that. The aggregation of 90 plus 75, it's also the avoiding all the chaos and making mistakes because of the chaos and all the negative marks as we get away. So it's that aspect as well. But again, the competition spirit is gone. So which means there is less motivation for you to perform. So it depends what the competitive spirit is going to help you achieve, right? So in this case, the person here, sorry, can I know your name? Sharon, right? He unintentionally, he helped a steam. Does it mean that he was not thinking from the benefit of his own team perspective? If that intention was that I don't care, I know what my team objectives are, but I can very quickly help out the other team as well for them also to succeed. It's a win-win situation, right? So competitive nature, it's good only up to a certain level. But how does that affect your overall product quality coming back to our work life, right? How does it really help get better at what we are doing? I think that makes a very big difference as well. And there is a time when you need to stop and leave all of those aspects aside and just focus on. I'm a team member. How can I help the team succeed? Right? Yeah. The same thought we can have it at the org level because right now we are thinking about the project level. Maybe the project level thing can go as the org level, whether the each individual project team can help to the org level to be succeed. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. Any other thoughts? In addition to that, if we are building something, how can we make that as a shared service so that we can help others also who are facing the same problems for a particular problem like with the same problem? Yeah. So my point is I think we took a leap of conclusion because for example, if you put two teams opposite in a football match, you can't add their scores. So it is a game by design was a competition. It's not a collaborative activity that team A was playing game A and team B is playing game B and then we can add the scores. So I think in practical world, what happens is the sense of competition is mostly self-created or an organization design thing. So the lesson which I take from this is have fun as you say that even though the environment looks like that, that it's me, us versus them, it may not be like that. We could actually work together very well. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for that. I was going to say the exact same thing. I was going to say, how can organizations create an environment where people are having fun so that these kind of, you know, characteristics come out and we work together as one team to achieve more. So their facilitation can help us, right? If we are the facilitation part will be also more important. If we have the thoughts, so we will go as a facilitator and we can help them to do the same. Absolutely. So we are actually done with the session. We can continue chatting. I think we have lunch anywhere right now, right? Yeah. So we can continue chatting anywhere, but officially the session is over. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks.