This video reminds me of my post of cleaning a kitchen metaphor
Thanks to JurgenDeSmet for the link
Last year at Agile Coach Camp Germany, in the evening there was a quiz about agile in the bar.
I was immediatly attracted by the format. I wanted to use this technique at the end of my agile classes. I have been bugging the presenter of the session for months to get the software he used.
This week I was reading Training from the back of the Room on a plane, where Sharon gives an example of a trainer using a pop quiz at the beginning of the training. Wow even better.
While flying, I realized I had been blocking myself, I did not need the software to start doing this. I decided I would create a google spreadsheet to collect questions.
The next morning before I even did this, I received an e-mail from the organizers of XPDay Benelux (As I only help a little bit I don’t call myself an organizer) with a question about a pop quiz… Seems I’m not alone with this idea…
I created the spreadsheet and thanks to a few friends I have already 35 questions.
The idea is to gather questions that if you learn the answers, you learn about agile.
Although it is nice to know how many people initiated the agile manifesto, it’s does not bring you any value.
I want to use the agile community to gather questions and to play the game at different conferences around the world.
I think it is even a good technique to use at CSM or other agile classes.
Read Training from the back of the room, to understand why.
I will create a downloadable version of the quiz that can be used by anyone. (with a creative common’s license)
I don’t want to publish all the questions freely in a blogpost as it can ruin the fun of playing the quiz.
I give access to the spreadsheet to anyone who asks for it.
In return I ask you add at least a few questions.
Update: Geoff Watts asked me who the quiz was for. After rereading I realized that was indeed not clear from this post.
The original trigger came from a conference. That does not help not help much as you have both newbies and experience practitioners at conferences. My goal is that after playing this quiz, people have learned some thing about agile. To keep the quiz fun, everyone should have the feeling they know something and not everything.
I will add a difficulty column to my spreadsheet.
Let’s making learning agile even more fun as it is right now…
Reader: But yves, you have not told us the right answer to the number of initiators of the agile manifesto!
Yves: That is correct. If you want to know the correct answer to that question, count the names you find at the //www.agilemanifesto.org/ (the first page not //www.agilemanifesto.org/sign/display.cgi)
Reader: Why don’t you tell us?
Yves: I’m convinced you will remember it more when you look it up yourself.
This presentation is part of a larger leadership lean & agile training. It is inspired by Tom Demarco’s Slack
The most popular item on my blog is the book list I made at Agile 2010.
As I read a lot of books, I wondered what other booklist could I make. I try to read at least one book every month that has nothing to do with IT. At this moment I am preparing a 2 day leadership course, although I have lots of agile, and IT books on my desk, these are the non IT one’s I have at my desk:
– The 7 habits of effective people
– The Goal
– Blink
– Training From the back of the room
– The Five dysfunction of a team
– How the brain learns to read
– Implementing Beyond Budgeting
– This is your brain on music (for the late David ‘Dude’ Hussman this was a must read book)
– Drive
– Linchpin
– Outliers
As any list, this list is not complete, I even think it is very biased in one direction (I feel that all these books could reference each other) What books do you think I should add?