So how exactly do teams self-organize?

Teams embracing Agile practices require new skills and capabilities. There are numerous discussions about technical capabilities required to consistently deliver iterative and incremental work, but what about soft skills? How do teams self-organize, collaborate and reflect on their own activities effectively? As Demarco and Lister famously observed, projects don't fail because of technology problems, but rather people problems. With this in mind, the Agile Bazaar invites you to their next Deep Agile event focused on the use of games, exercises & simulations to support Agile teams. Participants will have several tracks to not only see games used to learn concepts, improve behavior, and do work, but to experience it in a series of interactive sessions.

Come join Tobias Mayer, Lyssa Adkins, Portia Tung, Michael McCullough, and Don McGreal as they take you through a two-day deep dive into using collaborative and interactive games to enable Agile teams. Consistent with the theme of this event, all sessions will be experiential, offering participants a chance to see exactly how powerful these tools really are in organizing and supporting Agile teams. This conference will feature three tracks and participants will be free to float between all three based on their interests.

• Games to Learn: this track is focused on using games and exercises to educate and demonstrate concepts. Attendees will simulate a series of sprints playing the XP game and learn about the theory of constraints by identifying and exploiting bottlenecks. These exercises are appropriate for people seeking to learn more about Agile concepts, as well as practitioners looking for tools to use with their own teams.
• Games to Improve: these games are more open ended and focused on retrospection, reflection and change on an individual or team level. People will work a process to improve their throughput, reflect on difficult situations and even practice improvisational techniques. These exercises are appropriate for Agile practitioners and will be focused on retrospection, reflection and improvement (repetition; different words should be used to emphasize the point, just repeating detracts from the power of the message; an alternative could be: and will help experienced Agile users to take their current practices to the next level).
• Games to Work: games can not only be used to learn and reflect, but also to do the work of a team. Many Agile teams are already familiar with techniques like planning poker to size their work. Participants will explore other games and exercises to prioritize features, refine a product vision and plan releases and in general do the work of a team. These exercises will be appropriate for Agile teams and individuals looking for more collaborative techniques to interact and execute.

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