Gamifying Agile

Adoption - An

Experimentashish.parkhi@ideas.com naresh@agilefaqs.com

@AshishParkhi @nashjain

ashishparkhi.com nareshjain.com

“Gaming can make a better world” by Jane

McGonigal

Gamification is ...

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http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5zukh_jl8kM/maxresdefault.jpg

Gamification is everywhere..

Idea - Gamifying Agile Adoption

Source: https://www.atlassian.com/company/about/shipit

Every quarter, we give employees the chance to work on

anything that relates to our products, and deliver it during

ShipIt Day, our 24-hour hackathon. Been wanting to build

that plugin, redesign that interface, or completely rethink

that feature that’s been bugging you? You’ve got 24

hours...go!

Challenges

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• Responsibility & Accountability: Greater accountability eliminates the time and

energy spent in unproductive behavior that produces wasted effort, but what we see

in practice is that when the team is collectively accountable, only few actually carry

the burden of being responsible and accountable.

Actual VS. Expected

IDeaS Rock Star – Original Leader Board

IDeaS Rock Star – Original Levels

IDeaS Rock Star – Badges

IDeaS Rock Star – New Leaderboard with Badges

IDeaS Rock Star – Displayed in our Development area

Challenges

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• SD & QA should work together for it creates a strong sense of shared purpose –

but what we see in reality is that developers think their job is done once they commit

the code and testers think their job is done after filing a bug.

Actual VS. Expected

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Delivery Champ

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Spillover Champ

Challenges

• For every change to the production code, appropriate tests should be added for

they being fast, reliable, comprehensive and repeatable, giving you faster feedback –

but what we see in reality is that sporadic tests are added and focus is on manual

tests.

Actual ExpectedVS.

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Test Champ

Challenges

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• Code should be checked-in frequently for better collaboration – but developers

tend to checkin code towards the end of the sprint.

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Frequent Code

Committer

Challenges

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• Broken builds should be fixed quickly else it leads to “Broken Window

Syndrome“– and in reality the broken builds are left for someone else to fix it and

teams start feeling that it is ok to have broken builds, leading to more broken builds

and waste of time.

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Build Breaker

Challenges

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• Stories should be small and vertically sliced for them to provide focus, a short

horizon and gives team the flexibility to reconfigure and adapt to new discoveries or

changes – but what we see in reality is that stories are not sliced well and teams

make late discoveries.

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Delivery Champ

Challenges

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• Team should ensure that iteration commitments are met for that gives an

element of reliability if they can fulfil the commitments consistently. Helps better

planning – but what we see in reality is that individuals only focus on their own

stories, lot of efforts are put, but nothing is complete and usable.

Challenges

Image Source: http://www.descentstage.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/imagesdddm_cfa.jpg

• Rally should be updated daily for better tracking and visibility, based on which

necessary mid-sprint adjustments can be made – but what we see in practice is that

the data is not updated correctly leading to bad decisions.

IDeaS Rock Star – User Profile - Process Violator

Iteration Burndown

Velocity

• 7.2 Iteration 8 is when the IDeaS Star Program started crediting/deducting stars.

• So far this has been the best iteration

– in terms of recording the data.

– in terms of within iteration story acceptance.

IDeaS Rock Star – My Board

IDeaS Rock Star – Appreciate Someone

IDeaS Rock Star – Create a new Mission

IDeaS Rock Star – Claim Stars

Velocity

Rock Star Is Open Source

• https://github.com/IDeaSCo/rockstar

• https://github.com/IDeaSCo/rockstar-plugins-rally

• https://github.com/IDeaSCo/rockstar-plugins-jenkins-ci-game

Next Steps

• Work on plugins e.g. SonarCube, Gerrit, Git, Travis CI.

• Continuously work on making the game more

engaging.

• Host Rock Star online so that players can create their

lifetime stats.

• Ability to share player stats on social media.

© Copyright Integrated Decisions and Systems, Inc. (IDeaS – A SAS COMPANY)

Visit IDeaS online at www.ideas.com

Thank you.

ashish.parkhi@ideas.com naresh@agilefaqs.com

@AshishParkhi @nashjain

ashishparkhi.com nareshjain.com