Agile Games - Boosting Stakeholder Collaboration

In the world of Agile, the only constant is changes; requirements, business needs, and priority shift ever so often. Having a powerful approach to boost collaboration and engagement with our stakeholders is the cornerstone to any successful project implementation utilizing agile.

Ideally, we would like stakeholders to have the same level of enthusiasm and dedication using agile. However, in reality, constant feedback and changes can get a bit annoying, even for the client who sees the return on investment (ROI) during product implementation and the benefits of agile. Therefore, it's on the PM to find creative and less demanding ways to capture requirements using the leisure approach to reach our clients.?

Here are five steps to use in your next discovery phase and throughout your project to achieve a high impact on stakeholder engagement. It also ensures the client does not experience information overload or burnout while engaging with the constant changes. These collaborative games are used during various workshops to gain a better understanding of complex and ambiguous requirements. The aim is to facilitate group consensus in reaching a solution.

#01 Remember the Future

As stakeholders adapt to a more agile approach of requirement elicitation, using this technique will establish an image of the product using visuals. It facilitates the extraction of all ideas from everyone involved by allowing the stakeholder, in the present time, to describe what game plan (elements/features/methods) contributed to the successful future release.

How to run this play:

• Prep: Invite everyone (Dev team, Sponsor, Product Owner, users, etc) & create a shared virtual/ real whiteboard and sticky notes
• Set a future date for the release (e.g. 4 months from today)
• [5mins] Give the instruction to imagine the product after the next 4 months and 2 weeks (enough time after the release)
• [20 mins] Allow the individual to write down their responses in four buckets (Core features | Additional Features | Success Factor | Infrastructure)
• [20 mins] Allow individuals to explain and clarify their responses
• [10mins] Group the responses by associated cluster and remove duplicates

Expected Results:?

A list of high-level epics and features that gives a clear set of expectations of what the stakeholder deems as value to create the Product MVP for the next Release. This can be repeated over any number of releases to generate a Release roadmap. A list of features per release.

#02 Prune the Product tree

Allows the stakeholders to gather and shape the requirements by breaking down features from the epic level into User Stories and identifying dependencies.

How to run the play:

• Prep: Design a tree outline on a shared virtual whiteboard space
• [5 mins] Set the instructions to guide the stakeholders?
• Utilize the tree as the overall product
• Trunk represent features that are known or built already
• Outer Branch represents new features
• [20 mins] Allow the individual to write on the sticky note each new desired feature
• [20 mins] Ask the stakeholder to group similar features together and support features closer to the branch.
• [20 mins] Breakdown features deeper on the branches into User Story

Expected Results:

Dependencies in the features identified and the various new features decomposed. The team gets a better understanding of setting priorities and defining the development sequences. Identifies feature gaps based on the visual look of the tree to brainstorm additional features if required.

#03 Speedboat

The features and user stories identified in Prune the tree flows into this activity. The focus of this game is to identify the risk and opportunities that will affect the overall product development. This is a very simple but effective play to engage all the stakeholders.

How to run this play:

• Prep:?Design a waterline with a sailboat, with the boat moving in the direction of the product tree with rocks in between. This can be a virtual or real workspace.
• [10 mins] Set the instruction to guide the stakeholders?

1. The boat represents the project heading towards the product goal
2. Anchors represent threats that can slow or derail (sink) the project
3. Wind represents opportunities that can fast track the project
4. Rocks represent threats the team needs to steer around, accepting these threats (e.g. Regulatory)

• [20 mins] Brainstorming session, all the stakeholders are to note all the threats and opportunities placing them on the diagram (utilize various colors to highlight threats and opportunities).
• [20 mins] Allow individuals to explain and clarify their responses
• [10mins] Group the responses by associated cluster and remove duplicates

Expected Results:

The goal of the exercise identifies threats and opportunities for the project. Adding the mitigation activities within the backlog of tasks to be completed therefore reducing the chance for the project to be impacted by any threats and showstoppers.

#04 Buy a Feature

This play focuses on prioritizing the Features, User Stories, and Risk Mitigation tasks identified in the previous activities. In reality, stakeholders view the entire product feature as a high priority and critical for success. That being so, it is not uncommon for prioritization to prove difficult. While their holistic view is beneficial to various products, the target for Agile development focuses more on Minimum Viable Products. Although all features are crucial to achieving value to the customer, all products have more priority features.

How to run this play:

• Prep: Organize and groom the features and user stories identified in the previous activity.?
• [10 mins] Set the instructions: Based on the number of items in the Product Backlog each user will have a limited amount of voting points (e.g. 10 stories each user receive 8 voting points)
• [20-30 mins] Each stakeholder will vote on the importance of the User Story either provide 1 point per story or add a number of voting points to a single story.
• [10 mins] After everyone have use up there voting point, the facilitator would tolly up all the voting points by order of most points to least, this will give a huge context on the prioritization

Expected Results:

After running this game, we ought to have a group consensus on what is most valuable to the stakeholder as a whole. During the discovery phase, prioritization helps generate a Product Roadmap and group future releases based on the prioritization. Nonetheless, it will change as we continue building the product.?

Instruction for Running these Agile Games:

• Prep - Share the workspace link with everyone in advance of the session
• Set the stage - At the beginning of the exercise emphasize that:

1. Everyone experience is unique (prevent groupthink)
2. Timebox each activity and keep everyone within the limits
3. Provide a Powerpoint deck to guide the engagement to show instructions and after each exercise will showcase the results

• Duration - Ensure the activities are down within 1-3 days timeframe, any additional days or delays will prevent individual engagement to decline
• Break time - Provide adequate breaks between activities (15-30mins)
• Parking Lot - Utilize the Parking lot for information that is not relevant for the current activity but will be in another.
• Expect Change - During the building of the product, there will be numerous factors that will add/remove features and user stories as well as change prioritization of items in the backlog.?
• Tools - For virtual sessions, you can utilize collaborative tools such as Lucidchart, Mural, Conceptboard, etc