Retro Game: Tongue Twister with a Twist

Ever played tongue twister with your team? It is fairly doable when you recite a tongue twister in English or in your native tongue.

Let’s add more twists to it. How would you recite a tongue twister in a foreign language? This is both entertaining and challenging to run for diverse teams from different nationalities.

I facilitated this game with a team from the EU (mainly French-speaking regions) and from PH (Tagalog speakers). The first round of tongue twisters is in English. When a person gets the phrase correctly, she gets a chance to a recite a tongue twister in a foreign language.

Say if a member from PH recites the tongue twister below correctly,

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

she would have a chance to get an extra point to recite a tongue twister in FRENCH

Si ton tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu

Translation: If(Si) your(ton) uncle(tonton) mows(tond) your(ton) uncle(tonton), your(ton) uncle(tonton) will be(sera) mowed(tondu).

If an EU member recites an English tongue twister correctly, he recite a tagalog tongue twister to get an extra point

Pitongput pitong puting pating

Translation: Pitongput (seventy) pitong (seven) puting (white) pating (sharks)

To help the participant recite the tongue twister correctly, a native speaker can recite the phrase, or you can use google translate listen button:

Google Translate listen button

Have fun!

-agilepinoy

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Retro Games: Powerpoint Karaoke

In life, we have to play the cards we are dealt with. The same is true with the presentation decks prepared by the product team or management team that developers would present to the stakeholders. To prepare for these situations, a fun and exciting improv game can be played with the team, Powerpoint Karaoke. Powerpoint Karaoke (also called Powerpoint Roulette or Battledecks) is an improv game where the presenter gives a presentation from a slide deck they have never seen before. Much like how the Impractical Jokers (reality show) dare each other.

How to Play

Depending on the size of the team, the game can be played individually or in sub-teams.

1. Prepare the Powerpoint Karaoke slides beforehand, at least 2 decks.
2. Divide the team into equal members depending on the number of decks the facilitator has prepared
3. The presenters are not allowed to see the slides they will present.
4. When playing individually, the presenter must deliver each slide without skipping. When playing in sub-teams, team members take turns delivering each slide without skipping.
5. The presentation ends when all the slides in the deck were presented. Make the presenter(s) aware when it is the last slide so they can end the topic well.
6. Judging is by popular vote. You can have dot voting, where each member is given 2 dots to vote for other players. Players with the most number of dots win.

The team can set the criteria the example criteria below for judging:

• Cohesiveness with the theme
• Presentation flow
• Confidence
• Humor

How To Build Your Own Powerpoint Karaoke Slides

1. Set a theme or a topic. As an example, the topic can be potatoes. Add slides related to the theme or topic that can be hilarious images or information about the topic. A title on the first slide should indicate the topic or theme.
2. Know your audience. The slides you prepare should be relatable to the members. You can search for memes or jokes that the audience can appreciate. Make the slides appropriate for some clean fun. Avoid offensive slides.
3. Avoid complicated slides. Less is more, find slides with fewer words and images so the presenter can improvise given the image or information. Avoid animations and make the font size bigger.
4. Add some random slides. Do not strictly follow the topic as is, it is fun to see how presenters will try to connect random information to the topic.

As usual, I am giving out samples. Here are two funny decks made by a colleague (you know who you are – thank you so much!)

Powerpoint Karaoke – PenguinsDownload

Powerpoint Karaoke – PotatoesDownload

-AgilePinoy

Agile Retro Games: Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune Powerpoint Game Template by Rusnak Creative

Ever watched wheel of fortune on national television? It is a game show where contestants compete against each other by solving word puzzles in order to win cash prizes, which are determined by a spinning wheel. Our development team is competitive in nature and they are very energized by puzzles and competition.

You will need at least 20 minutes for this game with at least 3 players. I used the Template from the Rusnak Creative Wheel of Fortune Powerpoint Game. Here are some screenshots of the game.

Main Game

The Toss-up Round: Letters appear and the first player to solve the words win

Players Spin to determine the price of each correct letters

Controls

As the game moderator, you have to be familiar with the game and its controls. The template has a very intuitive how-to. Just follow it!

enjoy – agile pinoy

Agile Retro Games: Quiz Time with Kahoot

Need a platform to host and play your trivia games? Try Kahoot! Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that brings engagement and fun at school, at work, and at home. My kid’s teacher uses this in their online class. It is very easy to use for energizer breaks during retrospective or team-building activities, meetings or during workshops and trainings.

In this pandemic, several members took on gardening as a habit. I took pictures of my own plants and ask the team to name the plants!

Name this Plant Quiz created in Kahoot!

Kahoot! has a free edition. It lets you make multiple choice quizzes and true or false and host the game.

Sample Kahoot! Question

When starting a game, a Game PIN is generated. Then players will have to visit kahoot.it and they need to enter the Game PIN and their user names.

Starting a game in Kahoot!

Each question has a time limit, and scores are tallied at the end of each question. The scoring system include correct answers and how fast the question was answered.

Scoring system in Kahoot!

At the end of the quiz, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd placers are recorded.

Enjoy!

– Agile Pinoy

Retro Games: Chain Reaction

For today’s retro (Agile Retrospective) game, we will play Chain Reaction.

A chain reaction is a word chain of at least 7 words. A word chain is formed when the previous word connects with the adjacent word making a compound word (paired words) or connected words that make sense or recognized. Below is an image from google search. The work chain is: Crack Open, Open Sesame, Sesame Street, Street Smart, Smart Cookie, and Cookie Monster.

https://images.app.goo.gl/rZ3UDAAJtZLSSSVf9

There is a very handy powerpoint version of the game from Rusnak Creative Chain Reaction. Follow the instructions to customize the game.

The game is best played with at least 4 players equally divided to at least two teams. The controlling team will choose whether to guess from the top of the word chain or the bottom. A letter is revealed in the adjacent word and a representative of a team will have to guess the word. When the team guesses correctly, they will be awarded the points, when incorrectly, the control is given to the other team and another letter is revealed. The team who completed the chain has the will have a chance to play the Speed Chain round. The Speed Chain round is a shorter Chain Reaction with 4 words. The controlling team will have to guess the Speed Chain with the given time.

Sample Speed Chain

To help you fill-up your word chain board, here are sample word chains. You can makeup your own, even in your own language:

Chain 1	Chain 2	Chain 3	Chain 4	Chain 5
Source	Train	Daily	Food	Mickey
Code	Track	Scrum	Chain	Mouse
Red	Team	Master	Reaction	Trap
Flag	Building	Key	Time	Door
Pole	Block	Note	Card	Man
Dancing	Head	Pad	Stock	Down
Light	First	Thai	Broker	Town

Sample Word Chains

Enjoy! See you on the next retro.

– Agile Pinoy

Best Practices: Sprint Review

Are you getting enough value from your sprint reviews? Here are the best practices I share to Developers and POs

Purpose of Sprint Review

• Inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations
  • Inspect the sprint and value delivered
  • Adapt the backlog and the release plans
• Show progress toward the Product Goal
• Share the business value delivered
  • Conversation on how value impacts the user
• The main audience are the key stakeholders – business people and user representatives
• Celebration of the achievement of the team

Structure of a Sprint Review

• Introduction by the PO
  • Introduce new members if there are
  • Purpose of Sprint Review if it is the first time to conduct it (by Scrum Master)
  • Provide the context: Share print goal, Where we are with respect to the roadmap/product goal, Done and not done
• Demonstration by Developers
  • Demonstrate the value that is delivered in the sprint
  • In case it’s a release to production sprint, demonstrate the value from the previous release to the new version
  • Gather feedback on the value delivered
• Sharing what’s next by the PO
  • PO shares the next priorities and gathers feedback from the key stakeholders
• Closing by PO/Scrum Master
  • Gather stakeholder feedback via survey

Tips and Best Practices for Developers (Demonstration)

• Should avoid discussing implementation: how
  • As developers, we may have the tendency to show about the latest code, libraries, and framework we use. Leave it to the persons who might be interested in it like the guilds!
  • Avoid using technical jargon/terms that the key stakeholder would not understand. In case you have to, explain it in simple terms.
• Should avoid discussing technical tasks unless it delivers business value to the key stakeholders
  • The possible business value that key stakeholders may appreciate include the improved response time of the application, responsiveness, usability, and the like
• Limit the presentation deck, limit the time to a maximum of 15 minutes whenever appropriate
  • Have a live demo than a complete presentation deck
  • Limit to a list with at least 30 points font outlining the features to be demoed or 1 slide per feature with a title describing the value and the representative screenshot or flow, It can be an image representing the big picture of the feature being presented
  • Put only title, not whole explanation of problems. Talk about details, but do not write it because you will need to use 6pt fonts.
• Reviews are informal, the tone of the meeting should be conversational
  • Like story-telling, best to arrange the features to be demoed in a certain order that makes sense
• Showcase what was done, do not demo incomplete stories
• Defects resolved that are not found in production are not demonstrated (e.g. defects in new stories implemented in the QA environment)
• Prepare the inputs and configuration prior to the demo
  • Who would want to see login and setup or someone trying to look for the input files
• Demonstrate the happy path by default
  • If there are edge cases that you need to show, have the screenshots rather than trying to reproduce them on the application
  • This can also engage the stakeholder as they try to think for cases that may break the application. Only show the alternate behaviors when they asked.
• How to demonstrate features?
  • Describe the problem, pain or job, or gain and the persona related to it
  • Explain what is expected as the correct result
  • Demonstrate the functionality. Simple, straightforward
  • Ask for feedback
• If you show performance improvements, compare them with the previous version. Don’t provide just %. Talk to us in milliseconds, a load of x thousands of users, etc.
• The Developer who will perform the Demo should coordinate with the PO in building the agenda of the Sprint Review, confirm what to show and what not to show if uncertain.
• Do rehearsals, with your peers, the team, or with the PO

Tips and Best Practices for the PO

• Send a meeting agenda and a teaser of the features to be presented
• Provide the context
• Show the product backlog or an epic list
• Plays the lead Emcee (facilitator)
• Step in on business/domain questions during the demo of features
• Show product metrics if available
• Keep the meeting short
• Share any risks foreseen such as technology changes that may impact the product

Share any best practices or tips on Sprint Review from the comment below.

– Agile Pinoy, Agile Filipino, Agile Pilipinas

Retro Games: Scattergories

Scattergories anyone? Let’s start the sprint retrospective with yet another energizer game.
Offline, Scattergories is a word game where a dice is rolled with letters on each side. The objective of the game is to score points by uniquely naming objects within a set of categories, given an initial letter, within a time limit. The original board game is from Hasbro.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a board, there is an online version! https://scattergoriesonline.net/ is fully configurable. You can choose the categories, the number of players, and the time limit. You can setup a private game and share the link to the participants.

Sample Game in scattergories.net

For the game I conduct as a game master, I set 4-6 categories. At least 3 players should participate. The time limit is set to 45sec.

Rules of the Game:

• No adding an adjective to fit the first letter of the word (e.g., Purple Rabbit for “animals that start with P”).
• No repeating words in the set (e.g., no using Mexico for “countries that start with M” and “cities that starts with M”).

Scoring system:

• Everyone (or google) has to agree that the given word is valid
• For additional difficulty, cross out the words that are not unique (meaning 2 more more members answered the same word for the category)

Enjoy!

– Agile Pinoy

Retro Energizers: Name that Object

Yet another retro energizer exercise that you can play is — guess the object! A member describes an object using the five senses of the body (sense of sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste) and the rest of the team guesses the word.

The facilitator, usually the Scrum Master, prepares the list of objects that each member to describe using five senses of the body:

• Sight – shape, color, size, properties : solid, liquid, gas
• Touch: rough, smooth, hot cold
• Sound: what kind of sound it makes, like loud, hissing
• Smell: how it smells
• Taste: how it taste

At least 4 members should play the game. The following rules can be set:

• Give each member 20 seconds to describe the object
• Any member who are not describing can guess
• The member who guesses the object first gets a point
• member who fails to have his item guessed (2 times) or violates the Rules for Describing (2 times) will be eliminated

Rules for Describing

• Do not describe what it does: function, feature or purpose, what it can do
• Do not say what it has (example: it has a head)
• Do not say what you can do with it
• Do not act it out

Here are sample things you can ask the members to guess:

Eggplant	Pizza Slice	Shampoo
Fish	Balloon	Scrambled Egg
Toothbrush	Smartphone	Coffee
Microphone	Candle	Snake
Pie	Electric Razor	Bar soap

See you in the next retro!

– Agile Pinoy

Let’s Play Family Feud: Agile Retrospectives

Looking for a game to boost the competitive spirits of the team after a sprint? Try playing Family Feud! Family Fed is a popular TV Game Show where two families compete to name the most popular answers to survey questions in order to win cash and prizes.

Normally, you would need to download Family Feud online applications to play this game. But I found a Powerpoint Template from Family Feud Template From Rusnak Creative that is customizable (questions and answers) and can be shared via screen sharing for online meetings.

Here are sample screenshots of the game:

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How to play the game: Customized Game Mechanics for Online facilitation

1. Divide the team into two “families”
2. Ask members to turn on camera and ensure that they are away from their keyboards as the answers can be searched from the Web.
3. Each question is a ROUND. Each team should choose a representative for each round to play the round.
4. The facilitator will show the question and the representatives will answer (Example: Popular Programming Languages of 2021).
5. The representative with higher score point (Example: Family 1 Representative answered Python worth 30pts and Family 2 Representative answered Java 20 pts) has the option to PLAY the ROUND or PASS to the other family.
6. When a representative plays a ROUND, the PLAYING FAMILY has to guess the remaining answers.
7. The PLAYING FAMILY has up to 3 strikes. A strike is when the player is not able to provide an answer within 10 seconds or when she gives a wrong answer.
8. If the PLAYING FAMILY guesses all the answers, they gets all the scores in that round (100 pts).
9. Else, the other family (STEALING FAMILY) can steal the ROUND when they guess at least 1 answer. They will be awarded the sum of the scores of the correct answers.
10. If the STEALING FAMILY provides an incorrect answer or misses the 10 second timer, the ROUND score is awarded to the PLAYING Family.
11. You can play as many rounds as time permits.

Sample Round Questions and Answers, and Scores

The facilitator setups the game and come-up with interesting questions for the team to answer. Here are some samples.

Question: Popular Programming Language for 2021

Popular Games of All Times

Most Popular Messaging App in the World

Have fun!

– agile pinoy

Retrospective Games: Let’s Play Jeopardy

How about a game of Jeopardy to lighten up the mood after a sprint? Jeopardy is a TV gameshow debuted in 1964. The show features a quiz competition in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in the form of questions.

An online version of Jeopardy is available, you can choose the readily available question sets or create your own custom questions. Custom quizzes are limited to 5 category x 5 questions for free, payment and registration is required when you go beyond.

At least 3 members are needed to play the game. You need at least 15 minutes. I made a custom game board and asked personal details about each participant for the other participants to guess.

Readily available set of trivia questions

Custom Jeopardy Game Board Questions

Customized questions to test how well the team knows each other

There are available quizzes on Scrum! Even about coding and web development.

Don’t forget to have fun!

-agile pinoy