Description:
This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Michael O’Reilly, SVP in IT within the financial services industry.
In this episode, Michael, an avid board game player, shares the similarities between Dungeons and Dragons and potentially the Scrum Framework. Michael and Dan explore this interesting analogy. The entertainment world is huge and very profitable; it is a serious business for a lot of people who are employed in this field. Also, some fun games make work much more entertaining and the learning experience easier.
Key Takeaways
Scrum has a framework and Dungeons and Dragons has rules and infinite possibilities to take.
Session Zero in Scrum can have a bad reputation due to how it is characterized. In gaming, it also has similar features.
Everyone wants everybody to be successful, but there is this expectation of the role each one plays, the abilities, and how each member contributes. A session in DandD is like the increments of value in Scrum.
Transparency is always valued in Scrum as well as in any “good” constructed game.
House rules work for games and Scrum:
If you don’t follow certain rules, you are not doing Scrum.
Table rules and house rules are like the Team’s working agreements.
The Dungeon Master has a role that goes beyond the fun and the profits; his role is to arbitrate the rules and facilitate the adventure. What role is that in Scrum?
The Scrum Master could be the one facilitating the Scrum values on the Team but it is not quite the same as what a Dungeon Master does.
What does it take for a Game master to create a sense of agency? Michael explains how.
How do you plan for your session/sprint?
If you are the Game master, you need to make sure you have the characters there that will be introduced or met.
Players can prepare ahead for a game; oftentimes there is homework.
Everybody could decide to go one way and then change their minds.
Safety tools:
A lot of games provide safety tools for people to check in with their players while they are going.
In Scrum, a Team activity is about sharing what each member can offer and what they need, which is an effective way to clarify what each can bring to the Agile Team and in exchange ask for what is needed.
In the game, you attack the problem, not the people. In Scrum it is the same, you address a problem together as a Team to solve the challenges in the way to achieve the goal.
Fun activities are valuable opportunities to learn.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Improv for Gamers, by Karen Twelves
The Art of Agile Development, by James Shore
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Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]
Narrator [00:03]:Welcome to Agile Coaches’ Corner by Agile thought. The podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work. Van pave the path to better outcomes. Now here’s your host, coach band, agile expert, Dan Neumann.
Mike O’Reilly [00:17]:Picture this, you are a second level scrum master. You are heading into a meeting. You turn into the conference room and you find in front of you two PMP credential project managers, one director of human capital management, and a very, an angry client role for initiative.
Dan Neumann [00:45]:love it. Welcome to this Scrum Gens and Dragons episode of the Agile Coaches Corner podcast. I am your host, Dan Neumann, cloaked and bearded for this quest that we’re going to go on with Michael O’Reilly and s v SVP n it within the financial services industry. Michael, thank you for joining today.
Mike O’Reilly [01:07]:I’m super happy to be here. I think I just stole that from Mike Geyer, but I’ll take it. I, I have listened to this show for a while and so I’m happy to take part in it for change.
Dan Neumann [01:20]:I love it. Happy to have you here. And I was trying to decide if I should be like, like a Halfling or something like that. Cause I was a programmer, but now I do leadership be things. Yeah, I was a little conflicted about my my character type.
Mike O’Reilly [01:37]:The best part is you can be whatever you want, right,
Dan Neumann [01:40]:. That’s true, that’s true. Sometimes people ask me, well, what does it take to be an agile coach? And little tongue in cheek, I’m like, all you gotta do is say you’re one and see if they bite. So , I don’t advocate for that, but yeah, it’s in a nursing place we’re at with the industry. But Michael, you are a game player. A a virtual games, a tabletop game type of person, and you are seeing some connections between the tabletop world, Dungeons and Dragons in potentially the Scrum framework and some of the things we do in the Agile community. And that’s what we’re gonna explore today.
Mike O’Reilly [02:19]:Absolutely. Yeah. I I find it interesting, you know, we talk about games as a learning tool, games as a way to have learn, you know, just to enhance and, and make it fun rather than just a chore. But I also think about games in the business sense. You know we, we, we call this in scrum gens and dragons kind of tongue in cheek, but the entertainment industry is huge. It makes a ton of money. Dungeons and Dragons is a proper noun. You know, registered trademark wizards of the Coast who is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is enormous, right? So I think I looked earlier today and they’re trading at something like 56 bucks a share. So, I mean, it’s serious business for a lot of people. It employs a lot of people in the PAC Northwest and other places. So kind of brings it together, makes it a little more serious, but still at the end of the day, good to have a little fun while you’re learning and while you’re growing.
Dan Neumann [03:16]:Yeah, absolutely. I, and, and typically that’s that’s a good thing. I, I did a workshop with some folks recently and I get a little bit of hesitancy whenever I send out a multi-hour calendar invitation, cuz I know the person on the other end is like, oh, three hours. And even if you make the objective clear, it’s still like, oh man. I was pleasantly surprised that at the end of that three hours that involved several activities. Some of them might have felt a little gamey. They were like, Hey, that wasn’t terrible. That was pretty okay. I mean, know I’ll, I’ll take that as a, as a compliment.
Mike O’Reilly [03:59]:Yeah, absolutely. I, I think breaking up the day, breaking up the agenda, taking a minute, I, I is is always helpful.
Dan Neumann [04:07]:I was at a place once and somebody of a very senior title walked through while we were doing a game, and they did declare there, there shall be no more games in this organization. Like we, we were we are banned from doing anything that was like game. I was curious, have you ever run into that?
Mike O’Reilly [04:26]:Not, not exactly. I mean, I’ve, I’ve definitely seen it or I’ve seen it almost imminently manifest and then get sort of waved off. But I have also seen I’ve seen cases where let’s say senior leadership up upper executives will, will sort of understand it academically, but when you really test it, it’s, it just doesn’t quite get over that hump. And you’ll see, you know, the the level of engagement of the game to be, oh, I’m, you know, I’m too, I’m too important for that. Right? And, and, and so they’ll let it happen, but maybe they don’t participate or they’re guarded and, and it becomes, it becomes an an, an exercise in, do we, you know, can we go forward with this behavior? Do we need to sort of wave off and go a different direction? Do we need to remove this senior executive from the room so the room can grow? And we’ll come back to that in a, in a little bit, you know, that kind of a thing. But, but for sure, you know, I, I think I’ve been fortunate in a lot of my experience in, in history has been in supportive environments where there was at least acknowledgement of that, that nuance and some support for it, if not some actual participation.
Dan Neumann [05:42]:Sure. Well, thank you for that. And let’s go on this quest that we are about to All right, about to embark on
Mike O’Reilly [05:49]:Un fully intended. I love it. .
Dan Neumann [05:52]:Yes.
Mike O’Reilly [05:54]:So this was an earworm that I kind of had, had done. We, you know, in, in previous conversations and with others and colleagues, I, I discovered there’s a whole lot of people at my company that play d and d. And of course I play as well, and I’ve run campaigns. But what I, what I found interesting that I kept coming back to again and again and again, was how some of the skills and some of the techniques that you deploy in that setting aligned really closely with, with my learning of Agile and the scrum guide and things like that. And so we had started riffing on it, which turned into this podcast, obviously, and, and I’ve got like, so many things I’ll just get going. So I don’t know if we want to, you know stay on script or go full improv, which is kind of part of the fun of, of this sort of gaming forum.
Dan Neumann [06:41]:Well, I do like a good framework, but like any, like any good framework, we’re, we’re free to kinda wander and, and go to different places. And actually, as I say that, like Scrum is, is obviously a framework. I, I cringe when people call it a methodology and Dungeons and Dragons, I got to think of it, is there’s some rules to the game, but it’s insanely lightweight or maybe not, you can correct me. It’s been a, a while since I’ve played. But within that there are, you know, infinite possibilities of where you can go.
Mike O’Reilly [07:09]:Well, yeah, I mean, I, I think I, there was a sort of a word play that I, I opened, I had thought of in an opening. It was like, you know, scrum is to Agile as Dungeons and Dragons is to what? And the what there is tabletop role playing games. There are hundreds and probably even more that are actual properties, actual different rule systems. They all have different intents. And even even d and d, the shorthand version, and I’ll probably stop calling it that just in case the license Hawks are out watching. It, it has gone from crunchy really explicit, really detailed and nuance to just go have fun, you know, if you’re having fun. That’s the point. And so they’ve, they’ve, the rules have ebbed and flowed from really complex to let’s try to keep it really simple and other systems get even more simple.
Mike O’Reilly [08:02]:You know, the, the classic roll the dice type of thinking, there’s seven or eight different size of dice from a D four to a d a hundred and everything in between. And then there’s other systems like no, just one, one D six. Roll it, see what you do. You know, I see where you go. There are versions for kids, you know, there’s, they’re not name drop, but no, thank you. Evil is the name of it. And, and it’s, it’s one dice basically. You get it or you don’t. And, and it’s all about, you know, going to the dragons, snot falls and blah, blah, blah. So it’s very, very accessible, right? Some people like the math, you know, and they’ll just go all in on, on making it as complex and, and nuanced and as possible, which is great. You know, whatever floats your boat, that might, that might be the, the safe of of role playing games.
Dan Neumann [08:53]:, Oh, we, I love, oh yeah, we could, we could elaborate on the, the, the certainly safe wouldn’t be the whatever float your boat safe would be. Like, we brought in the Dungeons and Dragons and the snot dragon and you know, we got munchkin over there. Yeah. That’s, that’s in our safe adventuring game too. Yeah. It would, it would just be all the things.
Mike O’Reilly [09:12]:If you wake up, you have to roll to make sure you brush your teeth and then roll to make sure that you put your shoes on right. And then roll again to make sure you tied your laces. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s what I’m talking about with that
Dan Neumann [09:25]:. So , so that was fun. Let’s let’s dive in onto the, the conversation then with the, the, the scrum engine part.
Mike O’Reilly [09:32]:Sounds good. So so where to start, right? So one thing about I, the, this is a, you know, a common pattern and, and there’s nothing wrong with it if it works for you for, for d and d or, or what will or say, campaigns, which is a long running delivery of value, let’s say. And, and that’s the session Zero. You know, session Zero I think gets a bad rap in, in the agile circles at times because of how it’s characterized. And I think in my opinion, session zero in gaming is kind of the same thing. It does a lot of things that you need to do, but do you need to do it in a session? Do you need to do it instead of making progress? I, I, you know for the same reason I think people don’t like session zeros in an agile context, I find session zeros in a, in a gaming context to be exactly the same.
Mike O’Reilly [10:25]:This is what we do to get ready to do something. Okay, but could we have done that a different way? Is there a checklist? Is there an email you send out, you, you know, do you do it for five minutes before you start gaming? Or do you just start gaming and delivering some value? Does that first sprint really need to be a planning sprint? Does that, you know, session, you know, sprint zero it would be great to start slower and if you rub up against something rough, say, Ooh, that’s a thing we should, as a group decide we don’t wanna do. Let’s not have our combat like this. Let’s have our combat like that. Let’s not get our story structured this way. Let’s go that way. Right? Introduce some slowly over a couple sprints, continuously add value, introduce the gaming rules or the the nuance to how your table wants to play while you’re playing, instead of an administrative session up front that doesn’t actually have any gaming involved. And, and if you’re really unlucky, no food or snacks either, which is like the worst of the worst.
Dan Neumann [11:29]:Oh, that is definitely, I, there’s definitely a trend there between the, the feed your players. I’m, I’m big at, well, I guess I’m also thinking back to when we were live and in person gaming or doing Agile or Scrum where, you know, we got together in a place with, with some food sometimes for, for various events. And, and you were saying, you know, the challenge of trying to get started, I’ve been on those projects and, and those role playing adventures where they just never start. It’s like, oh, here’s another adminis trivia, here’s another adminis trivia, here’s another thing. And it’s like, oh, could we just, could we start doing something because we’re planning the heck out of this and we’re never going to do the thing?
Mike O’Reilly [12:13]:Yeah. It, and it’s kind of like the, there, there’s tropes around it, right? You meet in a bar, okay, I meet in a bar and I’m this gritty adventurer who lost their family to a troll dot, you know? And, and suddenly you’ve gotten a half an hour down and everybody else is just sitting like this, waiting for their turn, you know? And it’s, it’s almost, it’s almost sad to watch it play out like that. Especially you, you’ve sacrificed or undermined your ability to have fun by trying so hard to have fun.
Dan Neumann [12:42]:Yes. And I’ve, I think the analog that comes to mind for me is it’s gonna take me three months to get the requirements for the team. It’s like, no, like everybody, like no. How do we pull that in? What was a small slice of customer value need? You know, capture it however you want, dude. Call it a requirement if that works or product backlog item or a user story or task or all just, we’re gonna do a thing and get that slice going. Get it delivered.
Mike O’Reilly [13:15]:Yeah. Yeah. And, and what is the slice? You know, in a, i i we, we kind of walked like, we’re tick we were ticking the boxes in our pre-read on this thing. Like, oh, is this the same or is it different? What is this role? What is that role? And I, and I hope we get to some of that, but I like that we’re organically sort of just going at this point. A campaign would be like a product. You have this long duration ish thing that you’re working on. A session might be a sprint if you were trying to equate those two concepts, right? We are playing for three or four hours tonight, eh, maybe we’re playing for seven or eight hours this weekend. You know, you, you have this duration that you’ve planned or that you’ve agreed to. Everyone knows their role. I’m the human fighter, I’m the elf ma, I’m the no barbarian whatever you are, right?
Mike O’Reilly [14:04]:And you, you know, your role, you might be the scrum master, you might be the product owner, you might be the developer, but you come to collaborate, you come for the journey together, not necessarily cuz you’re the the one that’s gonna do it. And that person’s job is to make you successful. Yeah. Everybody wants everyone to be successful. But, but you know, we’re, we’re there’s this sort of just expectation of, of conduct and expectation of role and, and responsibility and how you contribute. You know, a session is your increment of value. If you play a session, you don’t feel like you’ve accomplished anything. Let’s, that’s a great opportunity to say, wait, game master or dm, dungeon Master, right? Old school te techno or terminology. I, you know, this wasn’t very fun for me. Here’s my problem. Boom, retro, figure it out, move on and make an adjustment. If, if everyone had fun, it’s usually pretty obvious if everyone delivered value. It’s kind of pretty obvious sometimes. I think there’s a lot of similarity there.
Dan Neumann [15:05]:Yeah. You, the, the, how did it go having the, whether you bring it up in a big group setting or a small group setting to that dungeon master or game master you know, conversations, some should be had in the group, some maybe are better suited for one-on-one, even though we value transparency in the agile world. I don’t know about in the game world, I would assume So
Mike O’Reilly [15:29]:I think, I think it good games well played structured games. Especially if you, if you’re, if you’re in a friends’ group, you conduct yourself differently if you’re in strangers, right? If you’re in a pickup game or you join some posting online, you know, they’re just like you said, COVID o right. Used to play in your basement or your mom’s basement or what, you know, whatever your, if you watch Stranger Things, right? Nowadays people play online over various platforms, zoom or Discord or whatever, and they will use camera and microphone and they’ll use online tools like map systems and token creators and, and they’ll do all kinds of really cool stuff. But you’re sitting at your computer gaming with people over the internet versus sitting in a table, you know, gaming with people in, in the flesh. I, you know, scrums pretty much like that these days too. I don’t know how many sprint reviews I’ve conducted over Zoom versus in person, but I know I I lean heavily towards the tech these days. Yeah. Maybe not my favorite way to do it, but it’s still there.
Dan Neumann [16:32]:Yeah. No, my kid actually went to a an actual store to play a game of magic over the weekend. And so it’s kind of a nice sense of normalcy maybe returning where humans get together, you know, in person. Cuz while I think this call is great to do the podcast recording and Sher more effective than me flying down to Florida, although it’s cold, and I would love to
Mike O’Reilly [16:57]:It’s cold here too right now. You don’t wanna waste your waste your time .
Dan Neumann [17:02]:That’s, that’s true. But yeah, just getting that sense of normalcy and getting that level of engagement. So a session zero some analogies there, or correlation between do we show up with a loose framework ready to engage and co-create, or do we do multiple kind of non-value add sessions? Or if there is value, it’s way, way, way down the line. What about table or house rules?
Mike O’Reilly [17:29]:Yeah, I, you know, the, the, the one that stuck out to me is scrum, you know, the scrum has a pretty, I’ll, I’ll say it felt pretty consistent. They’ve changed the na the words, they’ve changed the tone. But if you don’t do these things, you’re not doing Scrum, that’s totally fine, but it’s not Scrum be okay with that, right? I think that there’s aspects of that, you know, in, in gaming there’s rules as written or raw, there’s rules as intended, or r a i, right? So when I think about game rules, you know, the rule of cool often gets cited as an overriding or overriding concept. If it’s cool and you wanna let it happen at your table, you’re more than, you know, empowered to do that. If, if something doesn’t work for you, for your table, for, and your team makes a working agreement that they’re not going to abide by that rule, you’re totally empowered to do so.
Mike O’Reilly [18:25]:Some systems encourage it. They’re the, they’re very, very narrative driven. They want to tell the story and the rest of its flavor around the story. Some of them, it, there’s less latitude in in what the rules say. And of course you’re always free to ignore them if you choose. And so, you know, a table and table rules and house rules would kind of be like your team working agreements or your organization’s conformance to let’s say pure scrum versus, eh, we’re gonna take this part and set it off to the side and we’re gonna pick this other part up cuz it really works for us,
Dan Neumann [18:59]:Right? Yeah. And, and finding those boundaries around what’s, what’s in the framework. And, and if Scrum doesn’t work for you, sometimes it’s because scrums not appropriate to whatever you’re doing. Sometimes it’s just you’re actually not, I don’t wanna say putting the effort in, but, but you’re, you’re doing something fundamentally flawed about what you think you’re doing with Scrum and, and fixing that is an important business change that you need to make. I’m trying to think of, of a good example. Well, handoffs, oh, well we need to have a code freeze two-thirds of the way through the sprint because the quality people need a chance to test. Oh, okay. So that is the exact opposite of having a developers meaning anybody on the team and really moving the sprint goal or moving towards the sprint goal together. It’s not the quality specialist’s job to do the test.
Dan Neumann [20:02]:Y’all can figure that out together. It’s not one person’s job to write the requirements and do the analysis and hand it off to somebody else. There’s a lot of the phrase tininess comes to mind and, and I’m gonna try and get that into the lexicon, but there’s a lot of tininess lacking. And yeah, you could do a code freeze and then have your developers, your development specialists start something else, but you’re doing all kinds of bad stuff from a value delivery standpoint and you should fix that, not bastardize the scrum rules to accommodate your waterfall handoffs.
Mike O’Reilly [20:33]:Yeah. And, and you know, I think from that, from that point, you have a great conversation for an improvement or a retro item or just, just something to focus on in another increment, but you’re still incrementing, right? So start where you are and figure out how to take another step. There’s definitely an aspect of that here too. Do you need to spend two or three months studying the player’s handbook so that you can actually do combat correctly? Or do you just start swinging your sword and someone says, Ooh, but you can’t actually do that and here’s, you know, here’s what you can do instead. Or that’s awesome. Yes, you can do that this time, next time, not so much. Right? . So, so yeah, there’s so many ways to approach that, that either that friction point or that impediment or that looming sort of problem that might be growing. But, but you, you, you are where you are, right? Don’t, don’t sacrifice where you can go just because you didn’t step perfectly
Dan Neumann [21:30]:Well. And I like that there’s lots of ways to address it. There’s no one fix or change, et cetera. You kinda have to be aware of the context you’re operating in, the roles, the accountabilities, the expectations those people’s manager have of how they behave. And the, the journey will be different for everybody based on some of those constraints. Yeah, absolutely. Take us on your segue.
Mike O’Reilly [21:55]:All right. So kind of forgot where I was going with that segue, but that’s all right because I got a new one and a better one. And so we, we inspected and adapted the, we, I I, I’ve been kind of blending back and forth between the game context and the agile context. And so maybe just take a half a second and let’s do a deliberate comparison, right? We have fighters and majors and healers and all those things that these gaming systems have, and you have developers and analysts and QA and Scrum masters and pos, and they constitute the scrum team. They constitute the party. And there’s, you know, there’s a logical construct around all of that where the party is a unit that does things for purpose, ideally. I mean, you’re, you’re crawling the dungeon rid the land of evil, whatever it is you’ve come together to decide to do might be for the prophets, you know, the gold coins or whatever it is that that motivates your particular character.
Mike O’Reilly [23:00]:And you’re of course there to have fun, which is what’s motivating the player. The, the, you know, there’s one person on that team who has a different job and that’s the dungeon master. That’s, that’s a person, hopefully a friend, right? You might hire somebody or you might just know somebody that volunteers for the job and it’s a little bit of a thankless job at times, right? But that person’s role is to arbitrate the rules and facilitate the, the, the adventure, right? They might be reading it from a book, it might be a module they bought, it might be something they’re making up as they go. There might be maps and all kinds of detail that people know. And there might be completely off the cuff making it up. But that person’s role is to facilitate and arbitrate or, you know, adjudicate At the end of the day, in many contexts, that’s why they’re called the game master or the dungeon master.
Mike O’Reilly [23:53]:We, we were debating what role is that in Scrum? I don’t actually think that is a role. You could say it’s the scrum master cuz they facilitate the scrum values on the team and they facilitate and try to encourage or, or buy their function, enable the team to deliver value. But they’re not the rules lawyers per se. Maybe, maybe they are sometimes and maybe that’s a, a good working agreement in your organization and that’s fine if it is. But I feel like it, it almost cheapens the other things that the scrum master could do by saying, you know, you’re just there to make sure everyone follows the rules or tell them what to do. That’s even worse, you know, to tell them what to do cuz you’re running the show isn’t necessarily a persona I’d want to attribute to the scrum master. You could possibly put a piece of it in the product owner cuz product owners are supposed to be figuring out the what to the of value and the stack rank order of value. But I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like it’s quite the same to me.
Narrator [24:52]:Have a topic you want us to tackle, send an email to podcast agile thought.com or tweet it with a hashtag agile thought podcast.
Dan Neumann [25:03]:No, definitely not. And as I think of the accountabilities of a scrum master, yeah, they’re, they’re accountable for making sure the scrum framework is being used to, to maximize value delivery of that team. There’s a lot that could go into that, but they’re definitely not the deciders, you know, I think of a traditional project manager, some, or yeah, maybe that’s not even the right word, kind of a, an engineering lead or something like that. They’re the people that figure out the problem and then direct all their fungible resources on how to solve the, or how to implement the problem that they have solved on everybody’s behalf. And that is, that would that’d be a very target rich environment for a scrum master with an agile coaching mindset to go in and, and try and help that group mature and, and grow
Mike O’Reilly [25:57]:Well, and, and, and it erodes accountability. I feel like an ownership, right? So if someone’s telling you what to build and how to build it and when to build it, you’re just there building. I mean that’s not exciting. If you’re and, and, and I’ll call it agency, you know, it’s a big, a big loaded term in that, in the game space, right? Player agency. If, if I’m a player but I’m being railroaded and told to go here or sent here by the, the king or the, like, I’m shackled and put in a truck or a cart in a wagon and hauled off to this town cuz that’s where the next adventure is, then, you know, I’m not having a lot of fun. So it’s not very empowering. There’s no agency. I don’t feel accountable for my decisions of my character. If, if the dms run in the show like that, the players generally don’t last long. They get a little bit miffed and they eventually wander off or they just aren’t that engaged and they’re just there for the couple hours of beer and whatever. And so it’s maybe not as fun or as valuable or rewarding as it could be. And so I feel like there’s a lot of a, a lot of similarities there from the players or the, the scrum developer’s perspective.
Dan Neumann [27:06]:Yeah. And I think, you know, I, yeah, I’d probably hang around for the beer for a little while, but even then it’s like I can get beer somewhere else and have more in return on time invested. I think in the work world it’s worse because assuming people are still getting their paycheck and maybe they’re comfortable ish, they’ll quit and stay and then it’s really tough to get any kind of value delivery
Mike O’Reilly [27:34]:Yeah and cause other people problems cuz they’re basically quit in place and everyone else has to either manage around it or, or just accommodate or it starts to erode team morale and cohesion and everybody starts to get into a bad place. I mean, the other side is true too. If you have a game master who’s lording over everybody, you know, they’re gonna burn out. I if you have a, you know, if you have a, a leader, a tech leader, the product owner or whoever, right? The whoever’s been placed in that position of power and authority will either eventually misuse it or abuse it or will burn out and, you know, like, wait, you guys can make this decision. Why do you keep asking me to make this decision? Right? It’ll come to a head eventually.
Dan Neumann [28:21]:So what but do you have any tips or tricks as a, a game master? I guess I’m showing my, my age by saying dungeon master cuz I, I clearly haven’t played much lately, but the game master to create an appropriate level of, like you said, agency. I, it’s probably not, okay, we’re gonna burn this game to the ground and we’re gonna go off and and munchkin for the rest of of the day, but,
Mike O’Reilly [28:48]:Well, maybe that happens a lot. So I, I think, oh, I think the, the same tools, same tools apply. I think, you know, if you think about the scrum guide and you think about what’s in the scrum guide as far as the roles and the accountabilities and the artifacts, there are very similar things, but the values I think just align, you know, commitment. Can you show up to the game every week or every month or whatever it is that you guys have decided to do? You guys, the folks that are playing have decided to do right? Commitment is easier when there’s respect. Do you actually respect the people you are playing with Your game master the game master’s time, the, does the game master respect the player’s time, you know, canceling at the last minute or you know, not taking it seriously, sitting at the table when you’re supposed to be in the middle of the fight of your life on your phone playing Tetris, not so much, right?
Mike O’Reilly [29:42]:If you are not having fun, do you have the openness and courage to say so? Because, cause it’s often little things, oh, I don’t like the way that you always do this. Oh, I didn’t even realize that was a thing for everybody. I can, I only do that because I didn’t have a better answer. What do you think we can do this instead? You know, there there’s been, you see out in the industry there’s been adjustments made to try to address some of those things systematically. But you know, the don’t wait for someone else to come tell you how to, you know, how to yuck your yum. You find a way. But I think that, that the Scrum values and I said focus in like are you actually paying attention? Are you actually there or are you multitasking? Right? mm-hmm <affirmative>, they, they, they are the exact same tools, exact same reason and exact same value prop that you would see even in Scrum or an Agile team. I if if somebody’s doing something you don’t like, just try to bring it up and be nice about it, right?
Dan Neumann [30:43]:Yeah.
Mike O’Reilly [30:44]:Except, except hygiene. Cuz if you don’t take a shower then you know that’s
Dan Neumann [30:48]:A problem. Oh yeah. Well that’s true at work. It’s a thing too. We had back in the day I had a colleague who had to have what for him and for most people I think would be a very uncomfortable conversation. And it was like, Hey, that hotel you’re at everything. Okay, got the, the running water, the soap, the yeah. Yeah. We, we, because we’re working pretty close together and it was, yeah, it, it was a conversation that needed to, to be had. Let’s see, I had something run through my brain and in squirrel fashion, I, I have to see if I can go chase it for a second. You were talking about agency, the values. Hmm.
Mike O’Reilly [31:36]:Artifacts, roles. We did rolls. Yeah. We didn’t really do artifacts. There’s not really artifacts.
Dan Neumann [31:42]:It might not come back. Okay, well we’ll move on. I don’t know if we, we wanna run through all the, the roles, events and artifacts of, of the
Mike O’Reilly [31:50]:Yeah, that, that gets a little bit prescriptive. Maybe not as free and open conversation as we’d like, but, but yeah, we kind of talked about like the, the retrospective and the session is the sprint. Let’s say. How do you plan for your session? Well, if you’re the game master, you gotta make sure you have the characters that are gonna be introduced or met the bad people that are the things you’re gonna fight or whatever. The dungeon maps all laid out, you know, the, the, the players show up and play, but even they sometimes have homework. You know, I’ve, I’ve been in situations where, and I play games and I run games at times. And so when I run the game I would ask my players cuz I steal the best techniques cuz that’s how you do it, right? I’ll ask them, Hey, before the next session, send me something that your character wants but hasn’t told anybody.
Mike O’Reilly [32:39]:Right? And then I’ll find a way to dangle it in front of ’em sometime down the road. Or in some cases it’ll be like, Hey, this person and this person, you guys have a moment while everyone, you know, like you’re taking watch in the middle of the night cuz the bad things will attack if you sleep. Right? And so you guys have an hour to talk, what are you gonna talk about? Oh no, no, let’s not do that right now. Take that away and come back. You know? And so there’s oftentimes homework and there’s oftentimes like little extras. But when you think about, you know, refinement, refinement might be we were gonna go this way, but now everybody wants to go that way, so I gotta go, come up with some more stuff to do. You know? But, but yeah, there’s, there’s almost always a a a relative comparison to how, how you could game and game incrementally. Cuz you could read a module and just follow it page by page, letter by letter and you might get something done, you’ll have a campaign. But will it be as fun as if you were keying on somebody’s, you know, somebody’s uttered statement that had no context, but you remembered it and brought it back later
Dan Neumann [33:44]:, right? So let’s talk about that. Let’s touch on conflict then, then a little bit because I think some of these things you’re describing, you know, if there, if there are goals that people have that are unknown or unmet or unspoken or especially when they create tension between my goals and your goals as, as the case might be yeah. Healthy management of conflict in Scrum Agile worlds or gamification gaming.
Mike O’Reilly [34:14]:Sure there can be, I mean, you know, one of the things that’s been a lot more visible in online games that I’ve noticed in the last year or two, probably a little longer, but I’ve just, I’ve I’ve keyed on it in the last year or two is safety tools. And so now a lot of game networks, game groups will deploy safety tools so that people can check in with their players or the game master while they’re going. And so they’ll do things like, they’ll have cards and the card will be, it’s almost like speed up, slow down, stop, you know, I need a break. And, and you talk about like planning poker type of stuff and, and it’s, it’s because someone might introduce a concept in the game and it’s a game world, right? You’re just like, oh, it’s no big deal, it’s just a game world.
Mike O’Reilly [35:03]:Yeah. But you just brought up something that’s relevant to this person’s actual life history and it’s uncomfortable for them. Are you self-aware enough to recognize it and correct for it or is like, you know, and this is where like a session zero is almost always brought up as the way to mitigate this. We have the session zero so everyone can say what their, don’t go here. Concepts are, this is the stuff they’re okay with, this is the stuff they’re not. And then as a group you decide, can we do a horror you know, campaign or is horror going to cause this person problems? And we should avoid that. You know, we can do something different like Harding or something that’s a little more straightforward, slay the dragon, you know, but if everybody’s quiet or doesn’t feel like they can express that it festers and then someone gets upset and quits and then it could just torpedo the whole thing. And so safety tools, big thing.
Dan Neumann [35:56]:Yeah. And I, I could even see it being unclear at the beginning where the boundaries, I mean, you’re not running a therapy session there for multiple hours. And even if somebody says, here’s a thing that I wouldn’t want kind of brought up. I mean, well I wouldn’t be comfortable maybe bringing up what I’m not comfortable about. Right? And that’s, that’s the other part. So I did a, a team formation thing where
Mike O’Reilly [36:18]:Wizards of the coast got in a little bit of Oh yeah. Trouble recently because of that. They, they’ve been changing the way they approach the game with, especially cuz they’re kind of working on a new edition of the game. And so they said, well we’re not gonna call them races anymore. We’ll call ’em, you know, species Okay, nope. Prop. And like why would you do that? That’s weird. Okay. But yeah, but racial tone gives some people pause, right? Yeah. there was a race they implemented in a book recently that had a sort of a slavery background. They’re like, yeah, bada, you know, we screwed the pooch on this one. Yeah. And so, you know, they, they’ve changed some of the more negative story elements into something that’s a little bit more positive or a little bit more encouraging. You know, they had an adventure that had basically a type of, of persona that was characterized as gypsies, right? Like, well, yeah, but gypsies is offensive so they’re not gonna be that anymore. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, I understand. It’s like, I guess if you can’t tell any stories, then you’re probably in a, in weird territory. But if some, some things are just a little bit tone deaf in the modern world to, to just keep on hammering,
Dan Neumann [37:26]:Right? Yeah, for sure. And, and certainly things change and that target shifts. One of the activities I did with a team formation recently is what I need, what I can offer and then what I need. So here’s what I can offer to my team and here’s what I need back from my team. And I thought that was just a, a really effective way. I’ve used it before and it’s always been effective to say kind of here’s, here’s what I can bring to the adventuring party or to the agile team in exchange. Here’s what I really need back from the team or from somebody on the team and, and they don’t have to figure out who it is, but it’s a nice way of letting those needs be known.
Mike O’Reilly [38:06]:I I I and I love that because you don’t solve, you open up the room to solve, you know, cuz if someone’s solving it for you, you get accustomed to that. But I think the last thing is just orientation. You know, if you’re a group of players sitting around a table attacking each other, you miss the point you’re supposed to be attacking the bad guy, attack the DM because the dms throwing these, these challenges at you. Or, you know, attack the problem. Don’t attack the people in scrum in in your scrum team. Are you attacking each other or are you attacking the problem you’re there to solve? Building the thing, coding the thing, you know, providing the next greatest product to the market. You know, whatever it is. I, I think that that just, I think old school literature, right? The big hairy audacious goal. Are we attacking the goal or are we attacking the, the, the technique we’re choosing to deploy to to f to meet the goal?
Dan Neumann [39:00]:Yeah, I love it. I just jotted that down, attacked the problem, not the people that will go a long ways in life. For sure. Yeah, yeah, I was it was interesting. We see this, people will do weird things and it’s never obvious why, and, and, or sometimes it’s obvious why, but it was in the grocery store, one guy was losing his mind dropping f bombs at the poor lady who was greeting people cuz they were out of carts. And I’m like, a, I’m glad somebody intervened because it was appearing to become unsafe really fast. And b wow. It’s like, really there’s gotta be something more than the cart at issue here. Like, so yeah,
Mike O’Reilly [39:38]:The cart might have been the, the,
Dan Neumann [39:41]:It was the trigger for sure. But we see this in, in the business world, agile team scrum, these people will get fixated onto something and it’s not necessarily because they need that thing, it’s because there’s some other unspoken need that that’s going unmet. So yeah, people are fascinating. So Michael, I wanna ask you for maybe a summary thought on scrum gens and dragons and
Mike O’Reilly [40:05]:I, so obviously this is a little bit more of a lighthearted conversation versus some other ones, but I, I think just because, so, so think about gamification. You brought up that term earlier, right? Just because you’re having fun doesn’t mean you’re not learning doesn’t mean you’re not drawing some value from something. And fun is valuable all by itself. You can’t spend all of your life working your butt off, right? So I think that seeing the parallel lets you also see the opportunity to learn and, and you might be the greatest d and d player of the world and then you get in your scrum team and you’re doing like all these anti player anti character things because you don’t see them as similar, but they’re really kind of could be similar. And just because you’re the dev and the other person’s the analyst and you just don’t see eye to eye, there’s probably a lot of common ground you could find if you just think in that context.
Dan Neumann [41:01]:I love it. That’s a, that’s a very helpful and and optimistic way to, to kind of get people to think about, hey, like in another context, what could you do? And then, and then bring that into their, their work world. Michael, I want to appreciate that. You join and you’re a listener, so I I do enjoy that too. And as you know, at the end we typically ask what’s on your continuous learning journey and I’m wondering what you might like to share with the listeners here.
Mike O’Reilly [41:29]:Yeah, I’m gonna, I, I’ve got two that I wanted to talk about today. The first is a book in this space in the gaming space. It’s called Improv for Gamers. And it’s the author is Karen Tws. This is great and, and probably will resonate with the, the, the agile community as well in some respects because it is built for gamers from people that kind of understand theater in that background. And so it’s games to help encourage collaboration. And so one of the whole, there’s a whole section on yes. And, and of course in the scrum world or in the agile world, yes, ands huge. How do you build on what someone else is doing rather than tear it down And, and there’s, you know, there’s yes because, and there’s fortunately, unfortunately and all these little games that are designed to be built, you know, played with a, a small team to help them with their improv skills to help them with their collab skills and to spot things like oh, this person needs a little help.
Mike O’Reilly [42:27]:Let me jump in and help them. What, in this case, of course it’s a narrative improv plot point, a conversation being done constructed, but it could be something else. So that’s improper gamers if you’re in the gaming community. Nice fun team building exercises as well. The second one I got from your podcast about a couple weeks ago now, which will be, I don’t know when it airs, but James Shore with Diana Larson and a whole bunch of others, the Art of Agile Development second edition. Yes, this is a monster of a book, but I will chunk through it because as a former developer now leader, I still love to get my, at least get my brain wet with the, with the hardcore dev stuff. And so I’ve, I’ve already looked in, kind of flip through it and found a few articles I wanna prioritize just given my team’s needs and and our, you know, our space and what we’re working on. So I love it.
Dan Neumann [43:20]:Yes, I went to, yes and that I bought the electronic version of it because that it’s highly portable and then I was like, I wanna flip pages and mark them with post-it notes and underline things and yeah, you can do that on the electronic tools, but it’s not as satisfying, not to me. So I have that one now as well, so. Wonderful. Well Michael, thank you. I look forward to hearing about improv for gamers more. I’ve actually got from when we were working together, I still have that sticky note on my reading backlog over here to read that book. Nice. But then James Shore, I got excited about that and the picture on the front involves a goldfish and sometimes I feel like that’s my attention span with books, but I am looking forward to consuming all the books. Well
Mike O’Reilly [44:04]:Yeah, that one, that one’s gonna take me a bit to get through. I was hoping to get one more in by the end of the year. I’m not sure if I will or not, but it won’t be that one cuz that’s a monster. But I love it.
Dan Neumann [44:13]:That’s a big one. Well, good luck with your continuous learning journey and I look forward to hearing more about your gaming adventures.
Mike O’Reilly [44:19]:Thanks, Dan. May all your roles be Chris.
Dan Neumann [44:22]:Ah, very nice. Nice.
Narrator [44:24]:This has been the Agile Coaches Corner podcast, brought to you by Agile thought. The views, opinions, and information expressed in in this podcast are solely those of the hosts and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of agile thought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes@agilethought.com slash podcast.
