Emily Webber recently asked if I could run an 8-minute workshop to energise people at the beginning of her regular Agile in the Ether remote meetup. (It is a very friendly meetup and well worth checking out).
This is the detail of the game I facilitated:
Objective
Tell a story that develops iteratively and everyone in the group contributes to.
Instruction
Each person adds a sentence to a story, but has to repeat the preceding sentences first, then nominates the next person to go. (It may help for the facilitator to start).
For example:
Person 1: ‘Once upon a time there was a girl called Sam.’ Person 2: ‘Once upon a time there was a girl called Sam. She liked to ride bikes.’ Person 3: ‘Once upon a time there was a girl called Sam. She liked to ride bikes. Especially Harley Davidson’s.’ etc etc.
What this demonstrates
- How something can change in unexpected ways when you iterate.
- How continually adding can slow down and break things.
- The challenge of communication in large groups.
- Cognitive load (remembering all the sentences towards the end).
- Writing things down (documentation) can sometimes help for complex tasks
Feedback
The feedback in the session was positive, attendees felt it was a good icebreaker and a good simple introduction to complexity. If you run this too, let me know how it went in the comments.