Create an Agile Game based on Game of Thrones — Tutorial
For as far as I know, I always loved to play games. I was then very happy to discover the concept of Agile Games: games used by agile coaches and scrum masters for teaching and explaining the concepts of agile frameworks. Some are popular like the Marshmallow Challenge, the Paperplane Game or even Lost in the Desert that I personally facilitated during an Agile Game Night organised by Wemanity Belgium.
Most Agile Games focus on mindset, Scrum process and iteration. I wanted to find a game that speaks about specification and collaboration on a project. Also, I wanted a game that gathers the ingredients for a successful experience:
- A great storytelling that makes the participants dive into a world they like
- Something unique that makes it unforgettable for them
- Triggers collaboration to meet a common goal as a team, rather than individual competition
At that time, the last season of Game of Thrones was ongoing live. I really love this serie (yeah Arya is my favorite character). That’s how I imagined an Agile Game based on the Game of Thrones universe. I ran it during two Agile Events with success. And in this article, I’ll explain how you can facilitate it !
What this game is about and for whom
This game goes over Product specifications, Scaled Agile teams and Collaboration. Your participants don’t need to know Scrum already and they also don’t need to know the Game of Thrones universe.
This game is suited for middle to large group of people. It was facilitated with 20 and 30 people, by two facilitators. I personally invited Anna to help me on this game. I would personally recommend not to go over 30 if you are facilitating alone. The participants will be split into teams of 5 people. Each team represents a noble house of Westeros (Starks, Lannister, Martell, etc.).
During the game, the participants will have to craft armies based on the requirement they find in order to defeat the opponent. There will be 3 iterations of 15 minutes followed by a 15' debriefing. The game has a duration of 2h. I recommend booking 2h30 for having the time to debrief at ease.
Needed material
You will need preparation. First you’ll have to use your drawing and visual facilitation skills. You need paper posters (around 6). You can find the panels and all documents in the following link to the file. They display in a storytelling way the requirements for crafting the armies. Prepare also sticky paper for fixing the panels on the walls.
If you don’t already know how to draw for graphic facilitation (like Bikablo) here is the link to the Visual Facilitation Cookbook. You don’t need advanced skills for this, just some patience ! And also a black pen and some colors.
For each of your participant tables, you will need the following material:
- Paper
- Post-its
- Scissors
- Black markers
- Marshmallow
- Foil paper
- Rubber band
- Sticky paper
- Wooden sticks or skewers
- Anything you find useful for craft
I would also recommend having a sound system for ambient music. Letting participants crafting on Light of the Seven or Two Steps from Hell is awesome !
How it goes
The storytelling situation is the following: the houses of Westeros need to gather together to create armies to defeat enemies coming: The savages horde of Dothraki horsemen, the frozen undead army of the Night King, and even the ferocious Dragon of the Dragonmother !
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However, they are at peace for so long that they forgot how to raise an army. They need therefore to go find information on how to recruit these armies.
As facilitator, you represent the War Leader. You organize the teams. Each team has to elect one Messenger. This Messenger will go read the panels and fetch the specifications on how to build armies and come to you for any questions.
The First iteration — The Dothraki horsemen
For the first iteration, the opponents are the Dothrakis, warriors fighting on horses. To defeat them, your participants need to craft 10 soldiers per team. They have 15 minutes to do this. Uncover the first panel (King’s Landing).
During this first iteration, one messenger per table will stand up and go read the first panel displayed(the other are currently hidden). Then come back to his team and explain the requirements. The team then must proceed to craft 10 soldiers. At the end of the 15 minutes, each team presents their work to everyone. You can challenge them on the way they did it, if it respects all requirements, and compare the results of each team.
This first iteration is quite simple and introduces the concept of the game to the players. Here the teams are doing simple Scrum: one Product Owner goes meeting the stakeholders, then brings the requirement for a single product for a single team. Because you said “10 soldiers per team”, the teams usually won’t chat together. Note that in my example, I added information about Golden Cloak: soldiers worth twice the value, but there can only be 6 maximum around all the tables. This type of requirement leads the teams to start speaking together.
One feedback that I really like is that each time this game was done, there weren’t two teams having soldiers looking the same way. This is exactly what happens in the IT industry: for the same requirements, two Developers Teams won’t build the same product. This is both something wonderful and something that points out the need for guidelines when building a collaborative product with several development teams. And about that, communicating together is the next step !
The Second iteration — The White Walkers
The second iteration goes over the cold and terrifying White Walkers. Zombies coming from the north frost, led by the Night King. For this iteration, we need 10 additional Soldiers, 10 Unsullieds, 10 horsemen and 10 Healers Maesters. Note that you can of course adapt these numbers, count around 10 characters to craft per table. The participants have again 15 minutes, and have access to 3 new panels that you’ll uncover.
The important point now is that we need a product made of different kinds of elements. Now the teams need to communicate in order to reach the goal. The messengers should now speak together to know which team will craft which units. This is similar to a Scrum of Scrum in a situation of Scaled Agile. There is now a need for communication and alignment.
This time, I spread the information between several panels. The messengers must read each of them. I added several specific information, like the fact that Unsullied must be crafted by 4, meaning they must craft 12 of them.
An important feedback here is about the WHY of the product. I hid information about Dragonglass in the panels, saying it kills the White Walkers. To use it, the participant just needs to paint the weapon in black. Until now, none of the teams took account of this. Because I didn’t mention that I needed Dragonglass weapons. But they had access to this information, and should have brought it back to me, saying “You said you need to kill White Walkers, we found a way to be more efficient, should we implement it ?”. This is why the WHY of the request is important: if you know why the feature is needed, you can propose a product actually suited for it, not just answering a list of specifications.
The Third iteration — The Dragonmother
The final iteration: defeating a Dragon ! However, no one has ever succeeded in this task. So there are no requirements, no specifications. All you know is that a dragon flies. Now everyone must work together to find a solution for the next 15 minutes !
During this iteration, everyone is free to move and organize together. No structure predefined anymore (this will be a feedback point). There are no requirements so just enjoy the creativity of your participants !
The first major feedback point here is that since there is no structure anymore, you’ll observe a certain mess in the way the teams self-organize now. Some people are very active, others are not, some have nothing to do. This is a point that structure and organization are required at larger scale. A Scrum team is usually fine up to 9 people, so having 30 people working together, this is something else.
The second feedback point is about creativity. Since there is no specific requirement, the participants go very wide in the field of possibilities. One first group workshop made a fake dragon to attract the opponent one and shoot him, the other group made a bait infected with a virus to weaken him ! These are incredibly original propositions. Do not restrict the creativity of your development team with overly detailed specifications, they will often propose solutions you didn’t think of ! This is something Design Thinking tries to reach with a process of open creativity.
How to debrief
After each iteration, take another 15 minutes to present the result of the iteration and debrief the specific points explained above.
This Agile Game is more about generating situations where you can find unawares learning than pointing a specific case you want your participants to get. Some very good insights were found by my co-facilitator Anna during the game. Here are several interesting learning to raise:
- At the beginning of the first iteration, the messengers must step up and go read the panels. During this time , the rest of the team has nothing to do. This is why you need a prepared backlog before the first sprint (and not a sprint zero).
- The craft result might look odd, but if it does match the requirements on the panels, then it is fine. This can be put in parallel with the Beautiful Meadow game. Be clear about your Acceptance Criteria and trust your team for providing you with a solution that matches them, rather than telling them exactly what the solution should look like.
- The Messenger can (and should !) come to you if they have questions. This is a feedback loop and it is important in a company to communicate horizontally but also vertically.
What’s next
This Agile Game was a success and I hope to facilitate it again ! I think the storytelling helps a lot. Some improvements an agile coach proposed to me include switching participants from team during an iteration, giving exclusive requirement information to the teams, add a fourth iteration, etc.
There is a cheatsheet and everything you need on the Google Drive. About that, you are free to facilitate it, and even improve. You might also change the universe, depending on your audience. I heard there is a Lord of the Rings series coming soon, that could be a nice occasion…
Please let me know if you facilitate it and do not hesitate to send me feedback ! I’ll be pleased to read what this game becomes !
