Or, the Sources of Variation Game NoEstimates Game Or, the Sources of Variation Game For more info, please contact Matt Philip (@mattphilip, matthewrphilip@gmail.com)

Big Picture Goal: Deliver the most value! Each card delivered is a point Play in “day” rounds Teams play independently but have interdependency with other teams

Setup Divide into teams of 3-7 people – they do not all have to be same size Decide as a whole group: Each player’s role: A, B, C or D. (Wear a “role” tag.) Size/composition of teams (you can use matrixed workers) Work notes: Only 66% of the cards have A work D work is approximately 75% of B or C

Workflow Capacity: 4 points per team member/day Team members use full effort points in their primary role, half in any other Cards progress by finishing work in A-B-C-D sequence, though C-D can be done concurrently. A B

Team Dependency Some cards have a team dependency. When you draw a card that has one, also draw a team card to see which team it is dependent upon. To complete the card, someone from that team must spend time helping you. Time spent helping another team counts against your capacity. Team Dependency A ❍❍❍❍ B ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ C ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ D ❍❍❍ Team____________ ❍❍❍❍ Estimate Start Day Deliver Day Delivery Time Blue

Matrixed Workers For any worker who supports multiple teams, teams need to sort out who gets the effort. If a person works for multiple teams in one day, he or she deducts 1 capacity point for each additional team. E.g., role A works on Blue team and Red team in one day (regular capacity of 4 is now 3): A ❍❍❍❍ B ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ C ❍❍❍ D ❍❍❍ Estimate Start Day Deliver Day Delivery Time A ❍❍❍❍ B ❍❍❍❍❍❍ C ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ D ❍❍ Estimate Start Day Deliver Day Delivery Time Blue Team Red Team

Blockers A ❍❍❍❍ B ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ C ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ D ❍❍❍ Team____________ ❍❍❍❍ Estimate Start Day Deliver Day Delivery Time For each card in progress, roll the die at the end of the day. If you roll 1, the card is blocked. Place a blocker sticky on the card. At the beginning of the next day, roll the die for each blocked card. 1, 2 or 3 = still blocked (no work can be done on it that day) 4, 5 or 6 = unblocked (remove the sticky, continue work)

Rework For each delivered card, roll the die at the end of the day. B ❍❍ C ❍❍ D ❍❍❍ Estimate Start Day Deliver Day Delivery Time For each delivered card, roll the die at the end of the day. If you roll 1, the card requires rework. Move the card back to queue D. In subsequent days, redo the work in queue D. (Roll for rework only once per delivered card.)

Urgent Cards Deliver as soon as possible Your team loses a point for every day it takes to deliver A ❍❍❍❍ B ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ C ❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍❍ D ❍❍❍ Team____________ ❍❍❍❍ Estimate Start Day Deliver Day Delivery Time Urgent

Daily Actions Start: Have a flow-planning meeting to plan day’s strategy Decide how to use your total effort points Pull in as many cards as you want and record the day for commit date Roll to resolve any blocked cards (4, 5 or 6 = unblocked) Middle: Tick off work on the cards and move them accordingly End: For each delivered card: Roll die to determine if it needs rework (1 = rework) Record the day delivered For each card in progress Roll die to determine if it’s blocked (1 = blocked) Cross off the day on the day tracker

For your team… What do you estimate your velocity to be? What do the points translate to in days? For example: Points-Estimate Range Days 6-10 points 1 day 11-16 2 days 17-24 4 days 25-39 7 days

On your mark, get set, go!

Debrief When we estimate, what is the underlying assumption about its relationship to delivery time? What sources of variation did you experience? What was the correlation of delivery times and estimates? What was the best strategy? How do we reduce variation?

Probabilistic Forecasting What if you had tried to forecast using estimates? Do we have better ways of forecasting?

Blocker Clustering Keep track of your blockers For each day that it is blocked, dot the card At the end of the game, count the blockers: Number/rate of occurrence Total number of days blocked Reason for block

Context Switching If a team concurrently works on more cards than it has team members, it incurs a penalty for each card beyond the team size. For example: Cards in progress: 6 Team size: 4 people Penalty: 2 points (16-2=14 new capacity)