Agile Management Course – 2nd Iteration DONE

The Agile Management Course I am developing is steadily taking form, and its exercises are shaping up nicely.

Last week I organized a one-day “test run” for my new Agile Management course, in a class room that was graciously provided by iSense in Gouda. I had 22 people in the room, representing many different professions and organizations. I even had attendees from Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. (There were no Belgians, which meant I could reuse some of my jokes.)

The purpose of the test was to get feedback on the Agile Management games and exercises I have been developing. By trimming the slides and debriefs I was able to squeeze five games into one full course day. (It was amazing how tired I was at the end of the day, considering I let the attendees do all the work.)

To give you an impression of what went on that day, here are some pictures of several games in progress:

Meddlers of Catan

The goal of this game is to grow an organization in a networked fashion, by following a number of constraints, without resorting to a hierarchical solution.

Delegation Poker

In this game the goal is to delegate responsibilities to a team as much as possible, while recognizing that this depends on context and competence.

Competence Casino

This game is meant to familiarize managers and team leaders with possible investments in competence development, and their consequences.

Like in my first Agile Management workshop, at the Scrum Gathering in Amsterdam, the participants gave me a wall full of feedback on sticky notes. Fortunately, a lot of the feedback was pretty good. With only a few reservations, all games and exercises were appreciated. Most of the feedback concerned game mechanics and logistics, such as “give more paper copies”, “give better explanations”, “better connect to learning objectives” and “introduce more collaboration”. The suggestions I received from the attendees were extremely valuable, and most can be implemented easily.

The third test (of the full Agile Management course) will be at Ericsson in Finland, at the end of this month. The fourth test (of the games only) is planned for the Play4Agile conference in Germany, in February. The actual courses are scheduled to start in March.

Interested in attending an Agile Management course? Here is the schedule.

Interested in planning an Agile Management course? Send me an email.

And here are more pictures of last week’s test course.