Willem van den Ende

XP Game

An experiential way to learn iterative planning

The planning game is one of the more paradoxical parts of eXtreme Programming. The XP game unravels the mystery, and empowers you to start running your own planning games. When you play the XP Game, you'll get to experience the planning game (...maybe in another role), feel the velocity of your team, and see it work. The XP Game lets both business people and developers experience it.

The XP Game is a playful way to familiarize the players with velocity, story estimation, yesterdays weather and the cycle of life. Anyone can participate. This game is especially useful when a team or company starts adopting XP. The XP game has been road-tested by hundreds of people around the world. I was actively involved in testing the first and subsequent new releases of this game since 2000.

Depending on the size of the group, this tutorial is organised together in collaboration with the games' designers Vera Peeters and Pascal van Cauwenberghe, or one or more other coaches from Agile Systems Benelux. The tutorial material is open source, published on xpgame.be. After experiencing this tutorial as facilitated by others, you can effectively facilitate it yourself.

Rightsizing your unit tests

Quickly learn about the costs and benefits of various testing techniques

This workshop helps programmers who have already started Test Driven Development (e.g. after self-starting, or attending an Agile eXperience or Test Driven Development introduction.) to grasp consequences of more advanced testing techniques. The participants examine several code-examples to learn how to answer questions such as:

• What is the right size or scope for a unit test?
• What is it, that makes some unit tests easier to understand than others?
• How does mocking influence the ability to refactor testcode?
• How does the design of production code influence tests and vice versa?

The presenters and participants share their experience, resulting in several Diagrams of Effects explaining the forces that lead developers to choose one technique over another, depending on the context in which it is applied. After this workshop, programmers can select an appropriate technique quicker and with more confidence. Managers understand short- and long-term consequences of tradeoffs developers make better. This workshop is facilitated together with Rob Westgeest or Paul Simmons.

Balancing Act

Individual and Team dynamics

The Agile Manifesto states: we have come to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Tools and techniques are not enough for running your projects, you need 'people tools' as well. We all know that for instance developers and customers fighting abouth who did what wrong doesn't make our projects finish early, yet it is hard to stop doing it. Especially when the pressure is on. This session provides tools and processes for individuals and interactions, to help you take a step towards peaceful, effective projects. The workshop is based on Virginia Satir's work. Read on to find out more about this highly experiential workshop I do with Nynke Fokma and Marc Evers.

Communication Training

Tailormade, hands-on and actionable

One of the main agile values is communication. A team that communicates effectively and congruently is an order of magnitude more effective than a team that doesn't. Together with Nynke Fokma I deliver in-house communication training, adapted to skills, needs and context of the client organisation.

Change Architecting

Architecture is not a thing, Architecting is choreographing a dance and dancing it

This half day tutorial designed by Nynke Fokma is for advanced practitioners who are prepared to experience organisational chaos and change in an experiential company simulation. Please read patient information carefully before dancing the dance of change....

Diagram of Effects

Focused Improvement

This one-day tutorial introduces the Diagram of Effects (also known as Causal Loop Diagram) notation. A Diagram of Effects makes it possible to discover cause and effect relations that are separated by time, and are thus not immediately obvious. After this workshop, participants can find and communicate counter-intuitive, effective interventions.

Structured Crystal Ball Gazing

Presencing the future of agile programs and projects with scenario planning

The agile manifesto prefers responding to change over following a plan. In its most extreme form, this can degenerate into reactively developing software just for next week. We seek to create a lightweight way of longer-term planning, that allows us to make adaptive choices on a week-by-week basis.In this workshop we apply the scenario planning steps from The Art of the Long View - Planning the Future in an Uncertain World by Peter Schwartz, for moving into an anticipatory stance. This workshop is co-facilitated with Nynke Fokma or Marc Evers. See Workshop details and Scenario planning in Wikipedia for more information.

Value Stream Mapping

Deliver valuable software early

In this workshop we apply Value Stream Mapping to understand business value creation in a complete software development organisation, from requirements to delivery. After this tutorial, participants know where they can remove delays in their process to reduce time to market.

Game of Goose

Becoming aware of our rules

Game of Goose, an open source rule transformation game, intended to create awareness of responses of operational systems to given objectives and to strategic aim changes from executive management. A workshop from Nynke Fokma. Learn more about this fun learning experience.