Two games down, which is next?

The CV (Confidence Vote) game, followed by the 4 WHY's game. Early 2020 we gave people the ability to easily conduct their online Confidence Vote with their team. And then this summer we added the second game that brings everyone back to the great value of our Agile roots from the Manifesto.

We've gotten user feedback that: "this is not a game, it is a great learning tool for our team!". Thank you! Yes and yes! We decided to call all of the tools that we are filling the AgileNav PRO toolbox with: "games". Not to diminish the serious value that they can add for your team, but as a constant reminder that they should be fun to use. For almost two years we've consistently been doing monthly releases of AgileNav and thus we are constantly looking what would be the greatest new value we can offer our users. Recently, we have been focussing on authentication and with that offering our users a personalized experience in the app. And now, looking forward to releases coming up, it is time to start looking at adding our next game to the app. We have some great ideas but really wonder: what are your gamification wishes for the digital toolbox?

Confidence Vote Game

Early in the pandemic lock down we came up with the idea of the CV game. We had to bring the upcoming Q2 PI event to online and that felt like quite the challenge. Now that we were all working from home all of a sudden, we started looking at alternative ways to achieve the goals of this important quarterly PI event. One of the questions amongst so many was: how do we get a feel for the confidence that the PI attendees have for the outcome of the event. At least twice during the event we would ask them to raise their hand with 1 of 5 fingers. One finger indicating the lowest level of confidence and five the highest level of confidence in the new quarter plan.

We listed a couple of rules that we feel created the biggest value of the face-to-face confidence vote and than build these into the game.

1. It is easy to do and doesn't cost much time. The confidence vote can be conducted instantly and everyone in the room is able to take the initiative to start the voting.
2. It is inclusive and helps being courageous. You all raise your hand a the same time so there is no direct influencing each other during the first iteration of the voting.
3. It is transparent. The individual results of the voting is instantly insightful for everyone involved, by just looking around the room at the fingers raised.

So at this first online PI event, for the second quarter, we played the game facilitated by the Release Train Engineer. We played it while also having a huge Zoom session open to give us the ability to have the valuable discussion on the voting results, like always. We were not only able to see the individual voting results but the game also instantly gave us back the average scoring result ánd we were able to revisit the voting results later. "What a great addition to the offline voting!", was the common opinion.

The 4 WHY's game

This summer we decided the second game in the app was going to emphasise the Agile Manifesto. We called it "The 4 WHY's". Since the use of the digital toolbox is an integral part of the AgileNav training portfolio, we saw a great opportunity to both gamify the group training and also offer users a fun learning experience on their own.

On the first page of the 2001 Agile Manifesto we find the common values that are formulated as an four equation. X over Y creates a inherent priority on something that was valued more in the 'old world' (Y) versus something that is valued more in the Agile mindset (X). "While we value the items on the right, we value the items of the left more". This clearly creates a common ground for why you would want to transform to Agile, hence to title we choose for the game.

This second game is also easy to play but we have seen that so many have difficulty placing the 8 cards in the right order so that the correct 4 equations are formed. After playing the game and having a good discussion about it within your team we see that the understanding of the common values from the Agile Manifesto rapidly increase. This helps in the process of transforming people's mindset to become truly Agile.

"And it is those who start with why that have the ability to inspire those around them or find other who inspire them" - Simon Sinek

So what's next? Like I said, we have some real exciting stuff on our Product Backlog but we are looking forward to hearing from you in what you think would be the most valuable game addition to the digital toolbox that enables continuous learning for our users!