Results from Innovation Games®
In February 2010 the Scrum community was invited to play one of the Innovation Games®, called Prune the Product Tree. Luke Hohmann, the designer of Innovation Games®, was the organizer of this event, and together with a set of trained Innovation Games® facilitators he guided many members of the community through an online version of the game, which helped to generate ideas for the future work of the Scrum Alliance.
Two weeks later, a second game was played called Buy a Feature. This game, also played online, took the input from the first game and, using a marketplace metaphor, allowed players to "buy" the items they felt were most important in the work of the Scrum Alliance. The output of this game was a roughly prioritized list of ideas that was then presented to the Scrum Alliance board of directors for consideration.
The following video is a presentation Luke gave at the Orlando 2010 Gathering. Luke explains the games and their outcomes.
The two games together allowed the entire Scrum community to be involved in setting direction for their governing organization, the Scrum Alliance. From the Scrum Alliance perspective there were three important outcomes from the playing of Luke's games.
- Confirmation. We learned that what we are currently working on and what we have planned are valued by our constituents
- New Information. We learned the things that our community members care about.
- Tool Feedback. Innovation Games® has proven to be an effective tool for gathering and sorting information, and we plan to use this technique again.
The Scrum Alliance would like to thank all those who took part in the Innovation Games® experience, and especially give a big thanks to Luke Hohmann, whose own innovation, creativity and boldness made this work possible.