Scrum Challenge - QA One Uppers - Sofa

A few months ago i came up with a new scrum challenge i've been calling 'One Uppers.'  This one has been a big hit with the team.

One Uppers - Travis Sofa

Instructions

1. Start with a random person assigned by Judge.
2. That person has 10 seconds to come up with a response to this game's challenge.
3. The next person around the circle then has to come up with a response that in some way one ups the first person's answer.
1. one upping can mean anything that is bigger, better, more extreme, more interesting, more dangerous, more complex.
2. use your imagination.
3. things can be additive.  for example if i'm going to have a glass of water, then you might have a glass of water with ice.
4. additive can continue almost endlessly but it is not a requirement. 
1. ie a glass of water with ice and a straw.  a glass of water with ice, a straw and a salted rim.  but then the next one could be an ice cream cone.
5. the judge can rule against any one up and the person has 10 more seconds to either convince mike he's wrong (next to impossible) or come up with a new response.
4. This repeats around the circle, the one upping becoming larger and larger.
5. If a person can't come up with something that the judge likes within 10 seconds the buzzer sounds and that counts as a strike.
6. After 3 strikes or 10 minutes the game is over.
7. The number of one ups is counted and the score entered into the annals.  

Here's an example of one of these that we did recently. 

Travis, one of our co-ops was leaving to go back to school.  School being in Victoria, across the straight from Vancouver.  

The Question:

How Travis can get his girlfriend's sofa back to victoria?

The One Ups:

1. Carry it herself.
2. Help her carry it.
3. Use a dolly with flat wheels.
4. Use a trailer.
5. Use a horse with the trailer.
6. Tell Paul about the kitten shortage in Victoria - he'll tow it with his bike to get there.  (Paul fosters kittens for adoption)
7. Use 2 horses and Paul.
8. Harness Paul's kittens too.
9. Swap in a tractor for all livestock.
10. swap in a RUSSIAN tractor.
11. Swap in DM riding a Russian Bear for tractor.
12. Add Pontoons to the Bear to help it swim.
13. Add 2 canoes under the couch to aid in floating.
14. Add trained sharks chasing the DM/Bear combo.
15. Add salmon racing ahead of the bear to have something to chase.
16. Add cookies in salmon's mouths to encourage DM to motivate bear and paddle himself.
17. Add a helicopter with a tow rope for DM to hold.
18. MONSTER TRUCKS!!!!
    
    

Reception
The team has really enjoyed the one ups.  as the team wins or loses as a team (the goal is to get the most one-ups on the board in 10 minutes) it's very collaborative.  Suggestions are often shouted out but people are able to go their own way as well.  It's pretty rare that someone has to default on their choice.

What Went Right
This challenge went very well right from the start.  Team was quite willing to work together towards a goal.

What Went Wrong
It can be second nature to jump to an extreme right away cause that's more 'fun.'  In the introduction i cautioned against that because if you go to extreme too fast it's going to become harder and longer to come up with the next list item.  The end goal, after all, is the longest list, not the most extreme ending.

Lessons/Team Benefits
This game provides really good interactive, collaborative activity time.  It's always very good-natured and you can feel the team gelling together as they work through the 'problem.'   You can also feel the team using team dynamics and peer pressure when people make choices that make the game harder.  A good example was the very first list item on the very first play of the game.  The question was 'how do you stay cool on this hot summer day,' and the first response given was 'go to a waterslide.'  the team vocally rebelled against that individual and forced him to alter his entry to 'drink a glass of water.'   it worked out far better in the end and go to a waterslide was eventually used.  I'm a big fan of using team dynamics and peer pressure to encourage better team behaviour.   One of the most powerful things for QA in running agile teams is the ability of QA to gently mock a developer for making the same mistake repeatedly.

As it is a timed event it also provides exercise in thinking fast and problem solving.  Given that things get silly and you never know what the person before you is going to say you have to respond quickly with an intelligent response.  It also provides a very good exercise in thinking outside of the box.  There is no box for the way these one uppers generally go.

We've played 3 times now and it has yet to get old.

Absence Makes the Mind Wander - and White Lies Scrum Challenge

So i've only been slightly here for the past few months.  My life has been concentrating mostly on our new baby and making sure that work doesn't get left in the dust.  Things seem to be settling out a bit, as my daughter hits her 8th month and we get more used to things, maybe i'll be able to find some more time.

i think that one commitment that i can make is to be more regular about posting our friday scrum challenge details for ya all.

i think that i've mentioned it before.  my QA team meets for 15 minutes every day and has a pretty traditional scrum, what you've accomplished yesterday, what you're going to accomplish today and what blockers you're challenged with.  On fridays though, i take over the scrum and administer a 'Scrum Challenge.'  These are mostly team building games, questions, challenges etc.

Today's Challenge

White Lies

Instructions

During Scrum

1. Each person is handed a piece of paper.  (they've been told to bring pens)
2. Each person has 2 minutes to write down three statements about themselves and their name on a piece of paper.
1. the statements can be things like their shoe size, their birth place etc.
2. one of the statements will be a lie.
3. that statement should be marked as a lie.
3. The judge reads out each person's statements anonymously, randomizing statement order for each person.
1. going around the table each person votes on who wrote the three statements.
1. the judge records the people that get it write, anonymously.
2. a person voting for their own entry gets that point.
2. going around the table again, each person votes on which statement is a lie.
1. the judge records tallies against each statement.
2. a person voting on their own lie doesn't get counted.
4. At the end the judge tallies up the scores.
1. one point for each person's vote for the right person.  ie if Joe has 3 people pick his entry, that's 3 points for joe.
2. one point for each person's vote for the right lie.  ie if Joe has 3 people choose the statement that was actually a lie that's 3 points for Joe,
5. Winner is the entry with the fewest points. 

An example of an entry

Joe

1. More a dog person than a cat person.
2. I have 4 nieces.
3. I traveled to the D-Day beaches. (lie) 

 Reception
This game was received by the team quite well. It took a minute or two extra to explain and it challenged a couple of people achieving it but they enjoyed all of the parts.  Two team members indicated later independently of one another that they had really enjoyed this game.  I don't normally receive that kind of post-game validation so i'm taking that as a very good sign.

What Went Right

• The team understood the challenge and were able to play.  They were able to vote for one another. 
• The team enjoyed the challenge quite a bit. 

What Went Wrong

• Eight players meant that we were a little stretched for time.  we didn't get to do the scoring in the game together. public scoring is part of the learning and not having time for that is a miss.  i feel that we would have time for it if we play the game again because the learning curve will not eat up time and voting will be smoother. 
• Didn't think to have the players mark which entry was a lie.  had to followup afterwards.  i've already corrected this in the rules above. 

Lessons Learned
As with all of the games that we play, i want there to be something that people can take away from it.  Predominantly this game brought with it the concept of getting to know your other team members.  There is the obvious, of course, of learning about your fellow team members both from their true statements and their lies.  But there is also the depth of getting to know your team mates through the way that they approach untruths.  There are hidden queues there about nervousness of lying, how clumsy the lies are, etc.

This game also brought with it some game theory.  A couple of the people chose items that they believed others would think was someone else in the group.  They also chose lies that they thought would misdirect.  This wasn't really all that successful through intent that i saw (although some very good accidental misdirection occurred) but you could tell that they were trying.

We will play this game again.

It's the little efficiencies that get you good

Wow, it's been a while since i posted.   I won't make excuses...other than that since the last time I did post the wife and i have been dealing with the birth and first weeks of our new child.   Ok, i guess i will make one excuse.

Today was reading this article about Kaizen implemented adhoc in the real world and it made me realize that I have in fact been lazy my entire life.  Ok, to be fair, I could be called a lazy person by a lot of people and I wouldn't really have any defense against them.  I do appreciate my time on the sofa a little too much, it is true.  But this is not the lazy to which I am referring, or in a way perhaps I am.

I have never believed for any task that there wouldn't be a better way to build the mousetrap.  I have expended hours and hours in my life on more interesting make-work projects to somehow convert the original task to a more palatable, easy, comfortable or convenient effort.  I can't actually support a claim that throughout my life that I have have necessarily saved a lot of time/money/effort but i can at least claim that i have tried.  I don't think that i've ever tried to put forth that this desire to find the easier, more efficient, sometimes better way wasn't driven primary by lazy but hey, we all have our own motivators don't we?

Lazy is a term that kind of has more negative connotations than it needs to have in our society.  Lazy might mean that you do a shoddy job because you're too lazy to do it right, it might also mean that you never get your butt off the couch to do the job at all.  But lazy might also mean that you require yourself to have an appropriate end result but that you get there through a path that is smarter, easier, better.

When you think of lazy that way, Kaizen is lazy being good for business.  For this type of lazy is generally good for business.  Finding a shorter path to the same result almost always saves time, effort, manpower and obviously money.   At the personal level what kaizen, as i'm now choosing to call my lazy pursuit of better, does for me is two fold.  In the initial attempt at the task i am more interested and involved because finding the better way is in and of itself additional challenge.  But in future iterations of the task, it's an easier task to accomplish and therefore more likely to be done properly. Not to mention, any change in process from the first iteration will obviously need tweaking through the future attempts.

Kaizen, my lifelong friend, you provide justification for my laziness and for now that's ok.

Mr Fails

Stumbled across the Cartoon Tester blog the other day.  This guy does some pretty amusing cartoons that are exceedingly topical for software testing.

He wrote this little book/pdf for understanding the plight of the tester career and it's pretty bang on.
you can take a look at it from here:

Customer Service is listening and empowerment

So this past weekend I was out at a local business buying some stuff.  The local business is a national chain that sells hardware, housewares and etc.  They have a parking lot that is managed by a 3rd party.  I don't really know the ownership of the building and etc and i don't really care, what i do know is that the parking lot is managed by someone else entirely from the business i was going to visit.

So i'm arrived, i park and go to the parking metre to pay for my parking.  the first metre accepts my money happily and does nothing.  now, as an unlikely coincidence the parking metres were made by my company and i know what my putting money in, without the commensurate dropping sound and no screen updates means.  The machine has entered into a jammed state and roughly about $30 of change is going to plug up the chute until no more change can be added.  The only solution is for someone with a key to come out and clear the chute.  I grumble a bit about my lost $2.25, step two steps to the right, plug the other metre and everything is fine.

Now at this point i could call the parking operator, let them know about my lost money and suggest that they have someone from maintenance come out to fix the unit.  But i don't care enough about my money to call and the likelyhood of someone coming out to fix the unit at 6pm on a holiday season saturday are pretty slim.

Instead i head into the store and find someone who works there.  I let them know that the metre outside is jammed, that i understand that it belongs to another company and i don't expect anything from her.  She gruffly tells me that they've called customer service and it will be taken care of in due course.  I say that's great and i'm glad it's being taken care of but maybe she might consider putting a sign up on the metre saying that the machine is out of order.  Another gruff response about it not being theirs and customer service has called them.  I mention that it is currently putting her customers in a place where they are losing their money and maybe a sign would be a good idea.  Her response was that it wasn't their machine and she couldn't do anything about it.

So...there's a couple of things here. One, i was trying to be helpful, polite and understanding and her attitude back was really grating to me.  I get that.  it's holiday season, maybe she was tired and cranky.  Although, 2 weeks before the same person's attitude had also been gruff and annoying to me.  So just in general, dealing with people in a bad mood in customer service is not a good experience for the customer.

But the second is a problem of empowerment.  I understand that the lot isn't controlled by the store but the building is plastered with the retail stores signs, the parking lot is plastered with the retail store signage and the metres are 10 feet from the door to the only store you can access directly from that lot.  Most customers are making a connection between the store and the parking lot.  The parking lot just stole a customer's money.  Whether or not the customer is going to get their money back is one thing, and i realize that most customers are going to want that but even beyond that, knowing that the problem that has impacted their day isn't going to get fixed soon, that's a larger problem.  That retail store employee hadn't even been empowered to put a sign on the device saying out of order.

have you ever used a pop machine at a big store?  most of those are operated by a 3rd party.  when it's out of order, do you as a customer accept that it's ok for you to just lose your money?  no, because the affiliation becomes part of identity for you.  The customer service experience here would have been significantly better if the employee had simply been empowered to put a sign on the metre.  Failing that, escalating the situation should have been able to find someone in the retail management who could put a sign on the machine.  Hell, the experience would have been better if she's simply said, ' i will see what i can do about it sir.'

What did i do in the end, well i went about my shopping.  We told a couple of people not to use that machine on the way in, and a couple more about the machine on the way back out.  Then we got to our car, dumped one of the bags of purchases out in the trunk and went back and put the plastic bag over the head of the metre.  I, as an individual am empowered to help my fellow man even if the employees of the retail store aren't.

most advice is bad advice...

so a buddy posted a link to a blog i don't normally read because he liked the entry.  the entry is about how most advice given is bad advice.  it's a pretty short read, succinct and to the point.  in general advice is crap and you should discard it or sometimes advice is good and you should follow it.  kinda obvious when i distil it down to that level.  but the blog post did accomplish the most important thing about blog posts, in my opinion, it made me think.  (i hope mine does the same for my readers on occasion)

So here's my two cents on the matter (i do miss the cents key on computer keyboards).  You should never wholesale ignore any advice given.  nor should you wholesale follow any.  I believe you should treat advice much the same way as one should treat a tarot card reading or your horoscope.

OK, that's a little hard to accept given what most of us do with such blather.  Rather, you should take from it the same benefit that such 'readings' give to people who listen.  As with any good psychic reading, what should happen is the readee (is that a term?) should listen to the generalizations and begin to talk through ways that they relate to their own life.  As they go through this process of relating they hopefully make a breakthrough or revelation about their problem.  Either they understand it better, see it from a completely different angle or just get a handle on it that they couldn't previously attain.  In theory, this then helps them deal with the issue.  Now because most humans are incapable of growth on demand and because 'readings' aren't the best way to attain higher levels of existence  and people listening to readings aren't the most likely to move forward in such a manner...well you get my point.

However, the process is fascinating none-the-less.  The reason that readings are so successful is that they trick you into thinking that the revelations that you've made yourself were initiated by the 'spirits' or whatever.   Watching people go through this process is amazing.  It takes something that you could talk yourself blue in the face in trying to get them to see to little or no effect and instead leads them into finding it on their own.  It's as if they have invented science their discovery feels so brilliant.

This, my friends, is how you should treat advice.  Don't automatically discount it, don't throw it away out of hand, listen to it.  Think about it.  Find a way for it to relate to your own situation so you can understand that situation better.  That other person doesn't really understand you or what you're dealing with but what they do have is an alternate view if what you're into and an varied life experience from yourself.  It doesn't matter that their advice is most likely wrong, what it is is a kick-off point to your finding a new way of realizing your own situation.

All that said, it's really hard not to simply ignore people's advice, no matter how well intentioned.

power of innovation

A friend posted an interesting article about how to stay relevant within your own career.  It was an interesting article that got me to thinking about it from a different angle.  I've added me thoughts to that article.

Take a read if you like - http://barbarianprogrammer.blogspot.ca/