Finally I had the opportunity to try out the Lego4Scrum workshop with a group of Masters of Digital Media (MDM) students to teach Agile and Scrum development in a more fun way, instead of talking through it.
There were 10 students and they executed 3×7-minute sprints.
The workshop helped simulate the following:
- How to brainstorm solutions for user needs and then scope them
- How to facilitate estimations
- How to model the best interaction with the Product Owner
- How to prepare for sprints, execute and then improve along the way
Review
What went well (+)
- Students highly valued the practical simulation of sprints
- Teams got hands-on experience with the scrum artefacts (backlog, kanban, increment)
- Students learned how they organically improved with the tools
- Students took the opportunity to try out facilitation skills
What can be improved (Δ)
- Review the Agile Manifesto to cover the core principles of workshop
- Improving the vision statement
- Experimenting the right balance of just enough information
- Stricter Time-boxing to minimize analysis paralysis
- Find a better way to integrate backlog refinement with Product Owner
- Review the responsibilities of Scrum Roles (PO, SM, Team) during the simulation
