The Reasoning Behind.
Now, these activities are great, but how do you do them with remote teams? how do you
get everybody involved if, as looks likely, more people will be working at home in the
future? Also, many of these activities, while convincing to some, can fall a bit flat
as the audience don't see them as relevant; either the roles and artefacts in the game
are not what are used in the company, or the audience are sceptical because they believe
the parameters have somehow been "fixed" to make the demonstration work.
This led us to explore the idea of writing software simulations of some of these activities
to address these issues. Hence Agile Simulations; a set of apps that run these games in a
browser to not only demonstrate the concepts, but also allow customisations to address
any scepticism.
The Simulations.
The simulations, and the games they are based upon, are designed to try and answer some of the
big - although admittedly less frequently asked - questions in the agile realm.
Questions such as:
Is pairing better than not pairing, in terms of quality, cost and time to develop?
What is the best pairing strategy in a multi-skilled team? What is the best strategy
to acheive cross-functionality?
Why order the backlog by value if everything has to be delivered anyway?
What is the best strategy to approach work in an environment of interdependent teams?
Is the waste due to context switching really a thing?