ScrumGathering New Orleans 2024 Catherine Louis.pdf

How Gaming Tactics Can Improve Your Product Development: Playing the board game of Scrabble while verbalizing your Product Strategy

1. From Scrabble to Strategy:
How Gaming Tactics Can Improve Your Product Development
Catherine Louis and Arjay Hinek

2. Welcome!
2
Slides are available by contacting me using
any of the ways below:
Catherine Louis
[email protected]
[phone]
linkedin.com/in/catherinelouis
@catherinelouis

3. About Arjay:
Arjay Hinek has been in project management since the '90s, helping teams, companies,
and even individuals apply agile as a culture rather than a process.
While coaching teams, product owners, and management within small startups as well as
large enterprises, he has delivered workshops, training sessions, and talks on all aspects
of agile and team development.
As the Agile Leadership Team Transformation Agilist at Red Hat and a Certified Team
Coach, Arjay is always looking for ways to help teams and organizations learn as they
improve."
3https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjay-hinek/

4. About Catherine:
Product Strategy, Lean Innovation, Business Agility, Reinvention Practitioner: nurturing an
innovation culture helping teams to rapidly sense and respond.
20+ years of research and development experience in complex product development -
software, hardware, services, operations, new product introduction.
Led successful large Agile transitions within organizations from several hundred to
thousands of employees.
Side hustles: Beach vacation real estate, author, career coach.
Volunteer: 20 years as SAR II and K9 trainer and handler with Wake Canine Search and
Rescue.
Offer: Want to speak at AgileRTP?
4linkedin.com/in/catherinelouis

5. Plan for this session:
5
What inspired this workshop
Intros and welcome
1st round of Scrabble
What is Strategy?
Parallels between gaming and product development
2nd round: While playing scrabble, teams will explore and
collecting additional product strategy heuristics.
Table team read-out on what you’ve learned about product
strategy while playing scrabble.
Action recap"!
Your Take Away

6. 6
My sister:
Scrabble
expert

7. 7
“Bad strategy flourishes
because it floats above
analysis, logic, and choice,
held aloft by the hot hope
that one can avoid dealing
with these tricky
fundamentals and the
difficulties of mastering
them.” - p. 58

8. Intro’s: Find the person you
know least and intro yourselves
8
Take 2 minutes for each person to share:
Your name
Something that is non-work related that you are
passionate about
A story/situation about product strategy that
you’ve tried to overcome

9. The Importance of play
“It takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new
synapse in the brain, unless it is done in play, in which
case it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions.” - Dr. Karyn Purvis
“The desire to arrive finally at logically connected
concepts is the emotional basis of a vague play with basic
ideas. This combinatory or associative play seems to be
the essential feature in productive thought.” - Albert
Einstein
Let’s Play!
9

10. 1.Resources/People/Assets
2. Risk Management
3. Iteration
4. Adaptation
5. Continuous collaboration
10
Parallels of strategy in gaming
and product development

11. Strategy
11
The “kernel of a good strategy” has 3 parts:
1.Diagnosis - how’d we get here in the first place?
2.Guiding policy - the approach we choose to
overcome the obstacle identified in the diagnosis
3.Set of coherent actions designed to carry out the
guiding policy
Source: Richard Rumelt “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, The difference and why it matters:
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239

12. Example
12
Doctor:
Diagnosis: A set of signs/symptoms along with a
patient history. Doctor makes a clinical diagnosis,
naming the disease or pathology
Guiding policy: The therapeutic approach chosen
Coherent actions: The doctor’s specific
prescriptions for diet, therapy and medication

13. Example
13
A fixed route busing system for small cities and
universities:
Diagnosis: City planners currently ignore us. We
want to be known as the best fixed route ride
service management that cares about Climate
change.
Guiding policy: We will invest in and offer an
electric bus transit system.
Coherent actions: Establish partnerships with
utilities, establish contracts with the bus
manufacturers, measure #combustion rides/week
vs #electric rides/week…

14. 14
Playing Scrabble to further define
product development heuristics

15. 15
Story 1: “Not seeing the whole
board”:
Working in a company, I learn (via the coffee shop area)
that 3 different teams are busily working on the same
thing.
They’re all using a (corporate mandated) bug and
change request tracking tool for all development. The
default configuration is so complicated that all 3 teams
are busily working on scripting projects to simplify bug
and change reporting.

16. “Before you make
a play, you need
to see the whole
board.”
16
Scrabble:
“I didn’t have an “S” so I played “LEGAL” because
this player always plays on top of my last move.”

17. 17

18. 18
Heuristic
Title
Before you make a move, make sure you see
the whole board
Diagnosis
Our opponent always plays on the prior move
made -rather than scoping what else is out
possible on the board
Guiding Policy
Need to be able to see, use, navigate and
“play” on your whole board - whatever your
context is.
Coherent Actions
What’s our plan for “seeing the whole board?”
How do we anticipate change outside of our
immediate scope of work?

19. 19
No Release plan
We’re not looking far enough ahead
We have no time for strategy
Every Sprint is urgent and over-committed
Teams are all in burn-out mode
Story 2: “Not looking ahead”

20. 20
Scrabble:
“I could have
played two triple
letter scores with
“WHACK”
“But it’s best to
look ahead as many
moves as possible
before dumping all
of your tiles.”

21. 21

22. 22

23. 23
Heuristic
Title Look ahead
Diagnosis
We’re not looking ahead, instead we’re trying to
maximize work done each Sprint, burning out the
teams
Guiding Policy
Plan to deliver value (not just output) several
Sprints ahead
Coherent Actions
What’s our plan for looking ahead? What are we
doing to anticipate change? Do we have a
release plan?

24. 24
Story 3:
“Appreciate what you have”
All of the Specialized Skills have been let go
Company is frantically hiring gig workers to replace the
skilled workers to fill the gaps
Revenue will be recognized upon product release,
however there is no release yet

25. 25
Scrabble:
Instead of saying “I
can’t play, I only
have vowels!”
Instead, appreciate
what you have, and
know the value

26. 26
“Jean” for a double
word play!

27. 27
Title Appreciate what you have
Diagnosis We are not valuing what we have
Guiding Policy
Appreciate what you have, know the value.
Build on your teams strengths - amplify the
good
Coherent Actions
What are we doing to know the value and
amplify the good?
Heuristic

28. 28
Lets play Scrabble to further define
product development heuristics!
2 teams per table.
Lets have 1 product person per team to
help fill in the heuristic card
One Scrabble facilitator per table: you’re
the go-to person if someone challenges
a word
Lets all play differently: don’t just think
about making the most points, instead,
verbalize your strategy as a team before
making your play.
Jot down the heuristic - we’ll amass
them after 20 minutes of play!

29. 1. Build on what is working
2. Experiment with new combinations
3. Prioritize high-value opportunities
4. Iterate based on feedback
5. Value and focus on our strengths
6. Play and learn!
29
In both Scrabble and
Product Strategy:

30. @CatherineLouis
What is your 1 key take-
away?
30
What can you apply in the real world?

31. Thank you!
Please keep in touch, call/text/email any time for help!
31
Mobile: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @catherinelouis
Web: cll-group.com
www.linkedin.com/in/catherinelouis
Email: [email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjay-hinek/