Agile Fable – The Ant & The Lion

Every day, a small Ant arrived at work early and starting work immediately, she produced a lot and she was happy. The boss, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce more if she had a supervisor!

So the lion recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as a supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports. He recruited a spider who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The Lion was delighted with the cockroach’s report and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and analyze trends so that he could use them for presentations at board meetings. So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruit a fly to manage the IT department. The Ant, who had been once so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time.

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the Cicada whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office. The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, whom he had brought from his previous department to help him prepare a work and budget control strategic optimization plan.

The department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset. It was at that time the cicada convinced the boss, the Lion, to start a climatic study of the office environment. Having reviewed the charges of running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before so he recruited the Owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions. The Owl spent 3 months in the department and came out with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded that “The Department is overstaffed..”

Guess who the lion fired first?

The Ant of course “Because she showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude.”

Agile Fable – I, We, and You

Command and control 

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Agile Way of working

A team had three members – I, We, and You. There was an important job to be done. I volunteered. I encountered an obstacle and asked for help. We jumped in and started working with I. In mean time You ensured that Nobody disturbs I and We. Again I and We got stuck. You arranged help from Somebody. Job got done. Though it was Nobody’s job but We did it and learned a lot. Everybody was delighted.

Game: Word Game

Goal

The goal is to understand how WIP affects productivity

Time

10 to 15 minutes

Material

Couple of A4 paper sheets

Sticky notes

Pen/pencil for each participant

Roles

·         One developer: The developer will write down the words as given by each customer

·         4 to 6 customers: Each customer will give a word to the developer to write

·         One time keeper: The time keeper will record the various time records during the game

Pre-work

Game organizer creates 12 to 14 stickies each having a word written over it. Organizer should choose the word which have 5 to 10 letters and should not be commonly used in day to day life (e.g. desil, natiation, agastopia, benthos, erinaceous, gullus, cabotage, cacoethes, oxter, quire, xert, afreet, comes, ogdoad, etc.). While choosing words for part 1 and part 2 of the game, organizer should ensure that words in both parts are comparable in number of letters.

Let’s Play

Part 1

1. A team is consists of one developer and 4 to 6 customers
2. The developer is given a paper sheet and a pencil/pen
3. Each customer is given a sticky with a word written on it (say 4 customers with “deasil”, “natation”, “agastopia”, and “benthos” word)
4. To keep customer happy and to minimize the wait time of each customer, the developer starts writing each word from customer simultaneously 
5. The first customer tells first letter of his word to the developer. The developer writes down it on the paper sheet. 

 6. Now second customer tells first letter of his word to the developer. The developer writes down it on the paper sheet.

 

7. Step 6 is repeated for remaining customers 

8. Now first customer tells second letter of his word and the developer write down the same on his paper sheet

9. Step 8 is repeated for each customer

 

10.  Repeat step 8 for each customer for all other letters in their words

Note: Time keeper is jotting down following details while game is being played

	Customer1	Customer2	Customer3	Customer4
Time when first letter is written by developer on the sheet
Time when last letter is written by developer on the sheet

 

Part 2

 1. Each customer is given a new sticky note with brand new word (e.g. “oxter”, “erinaceous”, “cabotage”, and “gallus”).
2. To minimize the WIP, the developer is allowed to work on a single task at a time.
3. The developer writes down the word on the sheet as told by first developer.

 

4. Repeat step 3 for all customer

 

Note: Time keeper is jotting down following details while game is being played

	Customer1	Customer2	Customer3	Customer4
Time when first letter is written by developer on the sheet
Time when last letter is written by developer on the sheet

Discussion

Discuss the difference between both approaches

• Duration of first delivery
• Duration of overall delivery
• Confusion and chaos while work is going on