The Agile paper plane factory

The Agile paper plane factory

Some time ago I was looking for some interactive scrum simulation which is interesting and makes use of something different than Lego bricks :) 

Recently my current team had opportunity to meet in person and work in one location for couple of days so I started looking even harder for some interesting activity. 

And I found that - paper airplanes game.

I must say the game is really great and shows power of working in sprints, planning, retrospectives in very nice form. I would recommend it not only for teams who are new in Agile or Scrum but also for more experienced people.

What do you need?

1. Depending on number of people but you would need a room with table for each of teams

2. For each team you need decent amount of sheets of paper so they can build as many planes as possible

3. Flip chart and several sharpies

4. Tape measure

How to play the game?

Teams:
Divide your group into several (at least two) teams - 5 - 6 people each. Try to mix the group so people who work closely on daily basis are in different teams. Give lots of paper sheets and several sharpies for each team

Assign one person (or yourself) to be a Product Owner.

General rules:
- Use only one sheets of paper for each airplane
- One team member can perform one fold at a time, then need to pass the plane to another team member
- Team with more correct (accepted by PO) planes wins
- There are three sprints of work

Sprints:
Each sprint has the following ceremonies:

Sprint planning (1 minute): estimation time! Team estimate how many airplanes they can make in sprint

Sprint work (3 minutes): fold as many airplanes as you can!

Sprint review (1 minute): prove business value, demo made planes to Product Owner, count accepted ones

Sprint retrospective (1 minute): teams discuss and plan improvements

For each sprint you can use slightly different acceptance criteria for planes as well as definition of done (DoD)

Sprint 1

Definition of done
The paper airplane is:
- built
- tested
- can fly
- accepted by PO

Acceptance criteria
- The plane must fly 3 meters
- The plane must have logo on both sides
- The plane must have team name written on it

Sprint 2

Definition of done is the same as in previous sprint.

Acceptance criteria
- The plane must fly 4 meters
- The plane must have logo on both sides
- The plane must have team name on it
- Pattern must be written on top of wings

Sprint 3

Definition of done
The airplane is:
- built
- tested
- can fly
- accepted by PO
- compliant with safety regulations: no pointed points

Score

Assume each time has some initial budget (we took 40 $). For every accepted plane within estimate you can add +3$. For every above estimate you can count +2$. If plane won't be accepted during demo (team does not need to present every built plane) there is a - 3$ penalty. Also for each plane estimated and not done there is -1$. You can also add payment -1$ for each used piece of paper. Each sprint you calculate balance for a team and draw a graph for both - this is nice form of presentation.

Debrief

Give several minutes for each time to discuss internally an then discuss observations together. Look especially at:

- what teams managed to improve over three iterations?

- what wastes did they remove?

- how did they organize work internally - generalization or specialization?

- how decisions were made?

Possible variations

There are multiple variations possible. You can easily make this game way simpler or more complicated. 

- you can make the same DoD and acceptance criteria for each sprint - it's more stable situation and easier for beginners

- you can mix demo of completed items in sprint work, so every plane is presented just after completion. I preferred option with separate demo to bring a little bit more structure and avoid chaos but the other option make the whole game smoother I think

- score - simplest option is to just count number of accepted planes. You can also subtract the number of accepted planes from number of planes which were built but not tested and completed and use this vale as score. I used even more sophisticated one (as described above)

- number of sprints can vary - the more sprint you have, the more stable delivery and estimates are. But don't make too many - to keep focus and fun :)

Tips and tricks

-  be conscious of time - you can either remind about time or make a clear timer in visible place

Additional materials and references

The game is not invented by myself. There are many variations available on the web. I used a mix of several approaches. Some other pages:

https://agilefaq.wordpress.com/2018/11/25/paper-plane-game/

https://www.tastycupcakes.org/2018/12/valuable-paper-airplanes/

Originally invented by: Teresa Abney, Adam Nathan, Don Knobbbe, Lisa Picker - https://dzone.com/articles/kanban-paper-airplane-factory