Scrum Jeopardy
Using a game show to teach the basics of the Scrum Framework
I recently went on a Professional Scrum Master course run by the excellent folks at Elabor8. Having subsequently passed my level 1 certification, I was keen to go back to SEEK and do a “refresher” on the framework with the Agile community.
I was looking for a way to teach the Roles, Events and Artefacts used in Scrum. The Scrum guide has some great detailed definitions; but putting these into slide form seemed a bit dry.
Gaming It
Let’s sing:
Ding, Dong — Ding, Dong — Ding, Dong - Ding — Ding, Dong — Ding, Dong-Ding,Ding,Ding,Dong, Ding.
What game show theme tune is this? Yes, it’s Jeopardy.
Having previously run Agile Retrospectives using the Jeopardy format, I was keen to test if a similar approach would work here.
For those not familiar with the game show: the contestants get the answer and have to guess the question.
Following an introduction and exercise on the Why behind Scrum, I explained the game to the attendees. For “Scrum Jeopardy” I provided multiple answers for each Role, Event and Artefact; to provide a full definition of them.
By the end of the game, I was hoping everyone would have a clear understanding of the 3 Roles — Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team (Plus the Scrum Team and Stakeholders), 5 Events -The Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective (Plus the Backlog Refinement Activity) and 3 Artefacts — Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Increment (Plus the Sprint Goal and Definition of Done.)
Who is the Scrum Master?
Did the approach work?
I’m currently waiting for some results. At the end of the session I asked everyone, for homework, to take the Scrum Open Assessment. Assuming the game teaching approach worked well, then we should see some good scores on the test.
