What is the most attractive, easiest way to promote learning, create valuable meeting outcomes, motivate and boost teams, raise commitment and just get the best out of every involved person? Right: through play!
Dr. Brian Sutton Smith – Professor Emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania and leading proponent of play theory explained in his book ‘Ambiguity of Play’ that the opposite of play is not work, it’s depression!
Pat Kane, writer, musician, consultant, player, theorist and activist states in his book ‘the play ethic’ that play will be to the 21st century what work was to the industrial age – our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value!
In May 2010, Olaf Lewitz did a StrategicPlay® session at Agile Coach Camp Germany. Inspired by this session Martin Heider had the idea to create an unconference concentrated solely on the topic of serious games for agile teams. Organizers for such an unconference were quickly found – it turned out that a lot of coaches had already discovered the value and fun of games played in a serious context, and used them regularly.
A first in-person meeting of organizers to create an unconference for serious games took place in summer 2010. For 2 exciting days we created our first joint vision for Play4Agile and started planning. Not surprisingly that these two days were tremendous fun, as we created our vision and planned using StrategicPlay® facilitation, powered by LEGO® SeriousPlay™!
Agile conferences and unconferences are popular meeting places where coaches, trainers, and all people interested in agile topics, learn from the experiences of like-minded people and exchange knowledge. Play4Agile sets itself apart from other agile un-/conferences in a couple of ways. Not just that participants are having fun and learning from each other by exchanging serious games for 3 days in a cozy hotel in the country. Also, every evening participants enjoy playing games in the bar. This is not a must, but each participant likes to do it! At the bar it’s ok to play games just for fun, without any serious context.
This whole mood of playing games together for 3 days leads to irrepressible spirits and gives the unconference the character of a magical, familial event.
Furthermore, there are no keynotes, no lectures, mostly interactive sessions and the OpenSpace is facilitated by participants on a daily rotation.
It’s not only a perfect place to learn how to practice and use serious games for agile teams, it’s also the perfect place to create new games, as all participants are passionate about testing and experimenting with new game ideas and prototypes! For example, Fearless Journey, Nobody’s Perfct, Towering Options and Lean Procrastination – the last reponsible moment game are all games invented at Play4Agile.
Moreover, we have lots of other activities like theatre games, learn how to design and make a game or how to create games to solve problems. The whole event transforms into a huge playground!
The Play4Agile unconference is completely based on Open Space technology and took place for the first time in February 2011 with the theme ‘Serious Games for Agile Teams’. In 2012 the motto was ‘High Playformance for Agile Teams’ and 70 participants from all over the world enjoyed this special unconference. As Play4Agile 2012 was already booked after nine hours, you should mark your calenders, because the date for Play4Agile 2013 is already fixed!
To put the Play4Agile spirit in a nutshell: Play, have fun & learn!
www.play4agile.org
2 great TED talks about the importance of play:
Stuart Brown’s TED talk – play is more than fun
Tim Brown’s TED talk – creativity and play
I’ve written this article for the ‘whoisagile’ project by Yves Hanoulle and it’s published in the 13th version of the ‘whoisagile’ book. Thanks to Deb and Martin for proofreading end editing!
A lot of teams I met in the past worked also with avatars on their storyboard. Instead of having a name-tag on a magnet, you can use an avatar, a character from your favourite cartoon, movie or adventure. Just print out a picture of your avatar, cut it out and stick it on a magnet. Now you can use your avatar on the storyboard. Some teams put their avatars on the task they’
Let participants post their solution-combinations of StickyNotes diretcly beside the relevant topic of the golf hole improvement as you can see it on the right picture! As you can see, there is just one valid solution-combination for the first improvement, non valid for the second and 4 valid solution-combinations for the third.
In April this year, Olaf Lewitz asked me if I would like to facilitate an envisioning Session with 
StrategicPlay® for the ALEnetwork at XP days in Madrid in May 2011. Primary, Olaf wanted to facilitate this Session by his own, but as Olaf is beside Jurgen Appelo one of the original Drivers for creating the ALEnetwork, several people asked Olaf to participate the envisioning Session and add his Ideas to a Vision for the Agile & Lean network Europe – the ALEnetwork. Thus he would not be able to facilitate it by his own. As Olaf knew, I’m also a Certified StrategicPlay® Facilitator and knew that I’m passionate about the techniques of LEGO SeriousPlay® he decided to ask me.
A certification is just a confirmation that you know some rules, skills, styles or techniques. But it has absolutely no significance about understanding and living the mindset which is beyond the topic. You’ve learned some basic rules, some techniques, styles or some basic knowledge and perhaps you did some novice practice. It’s like doing the driving license. You know the rules on the street, you know the meaning of traffic signs and that you are not allowed to drive faster than 50kmh in a city. It’s like having a starter kit, not more. The statistics reveal that most accidents on the streets are made by young people between 18 and 25 – in germany. All these people have a driving license but not enough experience and practice when it comes to challenging situations in traffic or they just overrate traffic situations or even themselves. They have a driving license and are allowed to drive a car on public roads. But for participating in the Formula 1 you need more than a driving license. You need lots of practice and years of experience to be a good driver.
So, what’s the value of a certification? As already mentioned, a certification is an official confirmation, a starter kit for having some knowledge about basic assumptions for a special role or practice or a confirmation of certain characteristics of an object or an organization. But it gives absolutely no information about the mindset of a person or an organization if the values, which drives the certain special topic which is certificated has really a high level importance for them. In addition, it depends on what you are doing with the knowledge you’ve gained or confirmed by doing a certification.
Prepare a space for every single participant. You can use FlipCharts or use a dedicated wall-space:
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