XP Game

Last weekend, we were on a company kick-off in Åre, in the north of Sweden. I didn't get to go nordic, I didn't get to go ice climbing, riding, and all that I'd hoped for when the event was booked. But it was still nice.

One of our problems is making the other teams understand the methodology of Scrum and our scrum master, fresh from a scrum master course with Crisp's Henrik Kniberg and Jeff Sutherland asked if we could do a XP game. I was very sceptical. Very. I thought we would go from the other teams not understanding us to the other teams finding us completely nuts. Well, I was wrong. The others loved it. So, if your company doesn't understand you: you might try this.

It takes some preparations and it takes about two hours to complete, but for us it was worth it. Any time. Now the other teams have their own images of what a product backlog is, or Business value. Or sprint planning!

Lucky for us, http://www.xp.be/xpgame.html is a wonderful site where all the stuff is prepared. But fix all the stuff in advance, and don't try pulling this off on your own. Pair planning is a good thing.