• New Offering – Innovation Games®

    Date: 2010.09.02 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Design Excellence, Games, Innovation Games, Product Owner, Scrum, Tools, Voice of the Customer

    On May 6th and 7th, I attended an Innovations Games® consultant’s class hosted by Luke Hohmann.  Innovations Games® are collaborative games designed to help business people develop and prioritize new product ideas.  In the context of Scrum, these games are tools the Product Owner and product designers can use to engage the customers and different business stakeholders in defining the requirements for a product and thinking about product roadmap and multigenerational release plan.  Not a lot is written about the “fuzzy front-end” for Scrum teams and Innovations Games® fill that significant gap in way that is consistent with the Scrum values and principles.

    It was quite instructive to hear about the games and how they work from Luke.  From the different case studies discussed, we really illuminated the dynamics involved with selecting the right game for problem.  In addition, a few of my misunderstandings about the purpose of the games and how they are played from reading the book were cleared up as well.  What I liked most about the class was in addition to talking about the games, we played a lot of them in the course of two days.

    1. Remember the Future (played)
    2. Prune the Product Tree (played)
    3. Speed Boat (played)
    4. Product Box (played)
    5. Buy a Feature (played)
    6. 20-20 Vision (played)
    7. Show and Tell (played)
    8. The Apprentice
    9. Start Your Day
    10. Spider Web
    11. Me and My Shadow
    12. Give Them a Hot Tub

    Below are pictures of the Product Box I created for Look Forward Consulting announcing the new service available.  I look forward to using these games more and helping Scrum teams with improving prioritization and collaboration with their customers.

    Related posts:

    1. Innovation Games® at PMI Silicon Valley – Sept 21st 2010
    2. Best Links of the Week – Christmas 2009
    3. Scrum Bill of Rights
    4. Reading a Release Burndown Chart
    5. Best Links of the Week – July 16th 2010