Iterative Fruit-salad

So, after we have estimated our fruit salad, let's get our hands dirty!

....

After last time we prioritized and estimated out fruits, now it’s time to get our hands sticky!

Preparation:

• An excited team (10 people) with some budget to go and buy fruits during lunch break.
• A workspace (kitchen).
• Some basic tool: 2 boards, 6 knives, Some bowls and spoons

We create an expert team, who know about fruit-salad, and they just received their first customer!

First iteration:

Damien meets the team and describes his needs:

- I have 6 friends coming from France, and would like to offer them some fruit salad, what can you offer?

Team asks a few questions, like:

- Do you have allergies? (Smart! We planned an allergy in one iteration!)

- When is it?

And Damien’s response is basically - you are the experts, I trust you. I’ll come back in 5 minutes to see what you can offer.

And the team offers damien to have small two salads ready for the demo so he can understand better what is possible to produce.

They decide to split in two and start working frantically…

Cut them fruits!

Demo

When Damien comes back after 5 minutes, they happily present him with…

...Two identical big salads…

Two identical salads, find the difference...

The disappointed is written all over his face, he was expecting two…

but then he tastes them!

And we find out that:

- He is looking for a much sweeter salad

- More finely cut

- And more esthetic.

Also - he adores this small fruit that he never tried!!!

Retrospective:  

So, what can we improve?

We started to have tons of proposals for improvement, we need a paper-board to write all of them!

Oranges would be great! and we may not have oranges - but we have a near-by drink distribution machine, could we use ready-made orange juice?

Second iteration:

Damien is willing to try orange-juice in the salad but isn't sure he will like it,

and the team commits to four different salads for the next sprint! but asks for 10 minutes!!!

- Damien says it is too much, since his guests are coming soon and he won’t tell them to reschedule their visit just because there is a problem with desert, right?!

- Oh, turns out Damien may be allergic to the strange fruit he likes so much...

Team is much more organized, there is an owner for the clock, to warn everyone 2 minutes before delivery (so they prepare a nice demo)

During the demo:

Orange guice in the salad is nice (not too much though), in fact he likes the salad not to be too dry... , and some fruits are left out.

Also - the easthetics still needs improvement.

And the demo work so well Damien is happy to give the team an advance! So they can buy better tools (an apple peeler and another cutting board!)

An excellent demo from Ram the vegeterian, he sure knows his salad!

Third iteration

Damien’s friends are arriving soon, he has to have the fruit salads at the end of the iteration!

Turns out he didn’t have an allergy after all!

And a news flash! there are only three friends arriving and one of them has melon allergy

The team is eager to deliver!

In the middle of the sprint they have a brilliant idea! Let’s delight our customer! We will add m&ms as a side-dish (since we have more budget, and the vending machine is nearby)…

Then the demo arrives, we have a lovely table, an m&m dish, but…

...only two dishes are ready…

(Damien is happy about the m&ms but really disappointed only two salads are ready…)

Perhaps it would have been better to assure delivery before extras feature?

As a last exchange, damien is asked what is his favorite desert in the world?

The surprising answer is: chocolate!

Luckily we had a tablet of Dark Chocolate With A Touch Of Sea Salt!!!

Sometimes the solution is simple if you understand the need and not just the requirement, I guess ;)

All’s well that ends well

Personal learning:

• We didn't force the team to work in 'scrum', the customer wanted iterations and had time constraints, and the team self-organized around it.
• The whole exercise tool about 90 minutes, we wanted to add two more iterations but we ran out of fruits...
• If you don't wash the dishes end of each iterations, at some points you spend unexpected time to wash them (technical debt?), so you have an iteration where you deliver less.
• The main value was from authentic emergance in the team and with the PO.

Oh, and if you do the exercise, remember to buy more fruit, I asked the group to buy enough for the whole team but they were too modest...

And don't forget to thank the creator of this activity !

Till nextime!