Agile Programming

I’m always on the lookout for exercises and activities that illustrate some of the harder-to-convey issues in Scrum and agile. I just read a blog post by Certified Scrum Trainer Michael James that provides instructions for an exercise called “Planning a Party” that perfectly communicates the value of writing strong user stories and prioritizing them in a considered manner. You can take a look here.

It’s funny to think that something as simple as “planning a party” could better illustrate the function and value of user stories than something within a developer’s native environment, but everybody likes parties, so this one works great. As James describes it, participants are asked to imagine that their boss is throwing a holiday party for his co-workers and, in typical boss fashion, he wants the employees to do all the work! So participants are then given a list of vague and sometimes big directives and then asked to re-write them as agile-friendly user stories. Suddenly, questions about priority (which story is most important?) and order (which story should be completed first?) start driving the conversation. Before they know it, participants have simulated the same process of prioritization a Product Owner faces when prioritizing work and planning release dates. But since the context is immediately understood, it’s somehow less daunting than considering the same factors for a software project.

So who wants to plan a party?