{"id":4236,"date":"2014-05-07T14:53:25","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T14:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uruit.com\/?p=4236"},"modified":"2023-06-07T14:43:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T17:43:15","slug":"agile-practices-arcade-machine-scrum_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/agile-practices-arcade-machine-scrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Agile Practices: Building an Arcade Machine with Scrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sprint Zero. Getting started.<\/strong>
\nYes, we are building an arcade machine!!<\/p>\n

It all started during a team lunch. We were talking about vintage video games when the idea of having an arcade machine in the company to enjoy in our free time came up. We realized that we had almost everything we needed to get started and we knew it would be fun to build. So, we proposed the idea to the company to make it happen.<\/p>\n

As Uruit encourages agile practices<\/strong>, it was seen as a good opportunity to apply Scrum to a project out of the development realm.<\/p>\n

\"AgileThe guy with the original idea came to be the Product Owner , and we found a volunteer Scrum Master. And so, this project became a reality.<\/p>\n

Once we had the company\u2019s approval, we needed to determine what we wanted as a final product. Using the Visual Story Mapping technique, we gathered all the requirements, and that became our Product Backlog.<\/p>\n

As in traditional projects with Scrum, we refined the backlog, decided to have a two-week sprint and stand up meetings<\/a> twice a week.<\/p>\n

We had our first sprint planning meeting where we chose what had to be done during the first sprint and the sprint goal: to have a computer where we could play vintage games with an emulator running, a sound system and joysticks. That represents the core of the arcade machine, our minimum viable product.<\/p>\n

Sprint 1 \u2013 A good start<\/strong>
\nThe first Planning of the project was made. It was resolved that the sprint goal would be the first version of the product: having something, in two weeks time,\u00a0that would be valuable for possible users<\/strong>\u00a0of the Arcade Machine; i.e. a screen connected to a pc with a Mame emulator installed and two joysticks for playing.<\/p>\n

The team was motivated by this undertaking, and tried to get the initial materials to get started.<\/p>\n

The old 21\u2019\u2019 CRT that first motivated this initiative was brought; Uruit gave us a machine, and a team member some speakers and Xbox joysticks.<\/p>\n

Also, a budget was drawn for buying the materials needed in order to continue working in the following sprints, which included, among others, joysticks, wood and screws.<\/p>\n

So, for the first Sprint Review, the Arcade Machine v 0.1 was ready for Uruiters to play.<\/p>\n

This first version wasn\u2019t visually appealing; it had a lot of bugs and it wasn\u2019t even close to the final product, but it allowed us to prove an extremely important point:\u00a0our possible users loved the idea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"arcade2\"<\/p>\n

Sprint 2 \u2013 Not all that glitters is gold<\/strong>
\nThe second Planning was held, team\u2019s motivation was still high, and many stories were chosen for the following two weeks; but this time,\u00a0the goal wasn\u2019t so clear.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We resolved to tighten the budget; buy the joysticks, wood, and screws; mark and cut the wood; try several emulators; make a stencil design; spread our work within our company; write these posts\u2026 Anyway, a lot of work.<\/p>\n

What do you think happened? Reality hit us hard in the face. Even though we were motivated, everyone had obligations within our corresponding projects, and, of course, a life aside from the 8-working-hours.<\/p>\n

\"arcade3\"Typical problems in a project were now our own:\u00a0we had a tight budget, limited resources, and we had committed ourselves\u00a0<\/strong>to having every story finished in two weeks.<\/p>\n

We started having problems for holding Standups at a suitable time for everyone; we changed schedules once and again, but it wasn\u2019t possible to coordinate the team.<\/p>\n

The result wasn\u2019t good. At the end of the sprint, we only had two stories finished, the joysticks (brought from China in less than 10 days, quite an achievement), and little spreading of our goal to the rest of the company.<\/p>\n

Team\u2019s morale was low, but\u00a0thanks to Scrum we had the<\/strong>\u00a0Retrospective for venting.\u00a0<\/strong>As expected, we did a little of catharsis during the second Retrospective for a sprint that didn\u2019t come out as we hoped. Later, we started to try solving some of our problems; we determined Standups to be held at noon for everyone to assist; we agreed not to take so many stories and we added that we had to have a clearer goal for the next sprint.<\/p>\n

Sprint 3. The Absent Product Owner Syndrome<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some minutes after the second Sprint Retrospective, we held the third Sprint Planning. We took into account what we had said and chose fewer stories; we coordinated the Standups times; we established clearer goals. We thought everything would get better.<\/p>\n

It is worth mentioning that we hold Reviews and Retrospectives of sprints that are in progress followed by the next sprint Planning in order to minimize days and length of meetings. We named this meeting the RRP (Review-Retro-Planning). Usually, it takes no longer than an hour.<\/p>\n

The sprint started well, but we encountered another obstacle. We hadn\u2019t taken into account a very important fact: our\u00a0Product Owner, the original promoter of the idea,\u00a0was taking a two-week holiday, which would occur at the same time as almost the entirety of the sprint.<\/strong>\u00a0We then suffered what I call the Absent Product Owner Syndrome; the person with the business vision and one of the most interested people in the future of the project was going to be absent.<\/p>\n

We carried on with the sprint, but the team wasn\u2019t living its best moment. Stories were too big, which resulted in only one finished story. Commitment with the project had decreased so much that only 3 out of 8 people of the team were present at the Review and later at the Retrospective.<\/p>\n

So, we asked ourselves what we could do to motivate the team once again. Using this question as a basis, we came up with some good ideas.<\/p>\n

We realized that the\u00a0team was a distributed team<\/strong>; even though we all worked together in the same company, we were all in different rooms, and our schedules for working in the Arcade Machine project were different.\u00a0Distributed Scrum Primer\u00a0focuses on the importance of communication; bearing this in mind, we decided to create a diffusion team to insist on the participation in meetings as well as communicating anything related to the project effectively through Skype.<\/p>\n

We saw that we were working on much too big stories and progress was difficult to notice. We all know that seeing something at a standstill is no motivation at all, so we decided to divide the stories into smaller ones keeping in mind that\u00a0seeing movement would create more movement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We came to the conclusion that we had to\u00a0give more importance to the key tasks\u00a0<\/strong>of each sprint in order to achieve the goals. We thought it would be good to highlight the stories by marking them with a star.<\/p>\n

Finally, we decided to improve the taskboard for a greater visual impact to the inertia we expected to create.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

Hoping these new actions would make the project to take off again, we started the fourth sprint.<\/p>\n

Sprint 4\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013<\/strong>\u00a0The results of a good retrospective<\/strong><\/p>\n

After a disastrous third sprint, we put all ideas that came up during the last retrospective into practice in order to put the project on the right track once more.<\/p>\n

We created a Skype group for all team members, which was used to notify them, 5 minutes before, of the first Standup. Surprisingly, all members were present, including the Product Owner who had already returned from his holiday.<\/p>\n

We put everybody up to speed on the project status looking at the new\u00a0taskboard, and we divided the stories. During this sprint, we had, again, a clear goal:\u00a0we had to make something new for the product\u00a0<\/strong>since, at the last two sprints, we had given our users nothing new.<\/p>\n

This time, we wanted to build the control panel, and connect it to the PC to allow playing with joysticks, as well as install more games in the emulator.<\/p>\n

As agreed, the stories that made the sprint goal were marked with a star on the taskboard, and were considerably smaller. Some were: checking drawings, marking and cutting wood, designing the control panel, testing the assemblage and building the circuitry for the joysticks, and assembling the control panel.<\/p>\n

We had the main supplies, wood and joysticks, to start building the control panel. So, without further ado, we got down to work.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

The assumption \u201cseeing movement creates more movement<\/strong>\u201d\u00a0really works<\/strong>. While some people worked on marking and cutting wood, others tested the joysticks. At the same time, we made some noise \u2013literally\u2013 that caught people\u2019s attention, people who weren\u2019t interested on the project at first, and now wanted to join in.<\/p>\n

Therefore, at the end of the sprint, not only had we accomplished our goal, but also we had made a lot more progress than we had planned at first.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

During the retrospective, we congratulated ourselves for all the work done, and we promised to continue working this way.<\/p>\n

Sprint 5\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Spreading agile practices in the company<\/strong><\/p>\n

After a successful sprint, the team was once again motivated, and\u00a0the project was at its very best<\/strong>. At the last sprint, two new members joined the team, and we were achieving two important goals for the company.<\/p>\n

The first goal was\u00a0having people from different areas of the company to join the project.\u00a0<\/strong>Three people from three different projects, and people from infra and admin, were now also working on the arcade machine.<\/p>\n

The second goal was\u00a0spreading agile practices in the company:<\/strong>\u00a0we were teaching,\u00a0 in a practical way, how to use Scrum to people who weren\u2019t using it in their everyday life.<\/p>\n

As we all know, many companies fail to adopt and spread agile practices. We firmly believe that the adoption from a dynamic and entertaining approach can significantly diminish the probability of failure.<\/p>\n

Having this in mind,\u00a0we decided to present the Arcade project to the rest of the company\u00a0<\/strong>and to the Board during the Q; the Q is an internal meeting of the company where the most important facts of the last months are presented.<\/p>\n

Therefore, we included a story with that presentation on the Planning, which led us to consider having the arcade structure finished a few days before the end of the sprint in order to have more impact on our presentation.<\/p>\n

Thus, for this sprint, we decided to build the frame, create the internal design, install more emulators, get more games, install Jukebox to play some music, and, finally, paint the wood to make it look better.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we didn\u2019t have enough time to paint the machine before the presentation. Nevertheless, it was the main attraction of the evening, without being overshadowed by grilled pizzas and beers that were also present for the meeting.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

At the end of the sprint, we finished almost every story, including the first coat of paint.<\/p>\n

Anyway, another successful sprint. However, when you\u2019re having a run of good luck,\u00a0you can become a bit arrogant<\/strong>\u00a0and fail to see problems looming over the horizon.<\/p>\n

Sprint 6\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Scrum<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong>s flexibility<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new sprint brought new challenges. With the intention of making the arcade machine presentable for the Q meeting,\u00a0we had exceeded our available budget<\/strong>; we were in the red.<\/p>\n

Scrum doesn<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong>t mention how to solve this kind of problem;\u00a0<\/strong>it is seen as another\u00a0impediment\u00a0that affects the project and has to be solved.<\/p>\n

At the Planning, we took it as another story, although a high priority one since it hindered progress on other stories we expected to achieve during the sprint.<\/p>\n

Moreover,\u00a0this project was already taking two months and a half.\u00a0<\/strong>This may seem a short time for projects we\u2019re used to carry out, but for a project outside working hours, without compensation; even though you\u2019re building your own arcade machine, two months and a half can be too long for some people.<\/p>\n

I believe this is why some people who participated in this project from the beginning said this was their last sprint, at least for a while.<\/p>\n

In addition, an invaluable workmate left us: the 21\u2019 CRT which, after almost three months in this project, closed its bright eye never to wake again.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

Luckily, when\u00a0some run out of power, others take over the task\u00a0<\/strong>so the project can continue.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s here where we can see\u00a0a strong point of Scrum.<\/strong>\u00a0Planning work for short periods of time, in this case two weeks, makes it relatively simple to adapt according to the number of participants in the sprint and the amount of time each one can devote: this is known as team Capacity.<\/p>\n

Thanks to this working method, it was easy to adapt to having new team members as well as losing some of them.<\/p>\n

So we managed to adapt and get new funds to carry on thanks to our Product Owner, who, in fact, also changed.<\/p>\n

This is another point in favor of Scrum, because it\u00a0prepares you for changes<\/strong>, not only of the product, but also of the environment, the roles and the team.<\/p>\n

At the end of the sprint, we had a temporary substitute for the CRT, a second coat of paint, some improvements on the frame and the control panel, an easier ON\/OFF switch, new posts to be published and a notepad so our users could suggest games.<\/p>\n

\"Building<\/p>\n

Sprint\u00a07 \u2013 A well-oiled Machine<\/strong><\/p>\n

It had been three months\u00a0since we started building the\u00a0Arcade Machine<\/strong>\u00a0and during that time many people came and went from the project, but there were still plenty of us who wanted to continue.<\/p>\n

And continue we did, however we realized that the drive we had at the beginning of the project was starting to wane, so we made a decision \u2013\u00a0give the project a deadline<\/strong>. We decided to have two sprints, the one that was beginning and just one more.<\/p>\n

This decision allowed us to focus on\u00a0what we needed to do<\/strong>\u00a0to achieve our goal of having a polished final product.<\/p>\n

I think that if we hadn\u00b4t been using a\u00a0methodology<\/strong>\u00a0such as\u00a0Scrum<\/strong>, which made us keep a sustainable rhythm, setting our pace with meetings and time boxes, we would hardly have arrived at this point.<\/p>\n

Likely, without Scrum, the team\u00b4s efforts would have been individual and the process advancements would have been slower, disallowing us to see the motivating results that helped us continue.<\/p>\n

An analogy that comes to mind when I think of our team at that time, is that of a \u2018well-oiled machine<\/strong>\u2019 \u2013 even after the energy that generates the impulse is gone, the bearings keep rolling for some time.<\/p>\n

\"IMG-20150317-WA0002\"So, that is what was happening with our team at the time, the energy that generated the impulse was gone and the impulse was weakening, but the rhythm of the working method we had adopted and accomplished to date was keeping us moving; we were used to attending planning sessions, standups, reviews, and retrospectives, which were effective and adequate in length and in which each one of us already knew what to do.<\/p>\n

That was how we were successful in adding new \u201cfunctions<\/strong>\u201d to our product. We put\u00a0WiFi<\/strong>\u00a0on it to listen to music online,\u00a0downloaded new rooms<\/strong>\u00a0to make our list of available games bigger, continued writing these posts, advanced the\u00a0external design<\/strong>, and created a new \u201csaving bank<\/strong>\u201d for users to collaborate with the team and get funds to make the design happen.<\/p>\n

Finally, knowing we had only one sprint left and that by buckling down and maintaining focus, time would fly by, we got ready to prioritize the stories that would help us get the product to as \u201cdone\u201d as possible.<\/p>\n

Sprint 8 \u2013 Pareto is on our side
\n<\/strong>
\nThe Project was about to be finished, it was our last Sprint. Once again Scrum\u00b4s tools have helped us decide what was going to be included in the Sprint and what should sadly be left out.<\/p>\n

No matter how much clients, users, managers or even developers dislike it, in every project there are always things that will be out of reach. Why? Because the functionalities we can think of\u00a0are almost infinite. However, if we succeed in prioritizing the backlog -as it is proposed by Scrum- by the end of the Sprint we will probably have\u00a0a product that meets most of the users \u2018main requirements.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_3794\"Applied to software development,\u00a0Pareto\u2019s Principle<\/a>\u00a0indicates that 20% of the functionalities are used by 80% of the users. Taking this into account we could say that any project \u2018success lies on discovering those\u00a020% of functionalities and implementing them in the best possible way.<\/p>\n

Writing this post, a few months later, I quickly see how true that is.\u00a0 Although we didn\u00b4t develop all the stories the backlog contained, the final product was an absolute success. Not only The Arcade Machine is frequently used to play the games we included, with different emulators but also works as a Jukebox in every party we throw!<\/p>\n

\"_MG_3790\"<\/p>\n

At the end, beyond the created product, we can definitely state that the Project was successful. All the participants who learned Scrum \u201cby playing\u201d are now able to apply Scrum to the projects they are part of and have become agile principles \u2018great defenders.<\/p>\n

We, the Arcade Machine builders, believe the best way to know a methodology is by using it and we are now seeking for new projects to gain experience, and why not play, while learning more about other agile methodologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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