Agilitest cards: it is more than a set of cards!

Agilitest cards: a valuable physical repository of quality-related best practices

Agilitest cards includes 90 cards representing best practices. The cards are divided into 5 categories:

• The mindset of the communities of practice and 3 amigos
• The planning process containing OKRs and Definition of Ready (DoR)
• The improvement with Niko Niko and gamification of retrospective (which is proposed by the cards)
• Automated test and its cards about ATDD or test harnesses*
• Active test that includes practices like security test or Dark Launch

As you can see, Agilitest's cards offer a real repertository of best practices, so you can discover them, share them, try to implement them or even refer to them!

Taking things a step further, these cards can also be used playfully in retrospectives to determine actions to be taken. And if you take a step back, you'll see that there is a lot you can do with this set of cards, particularly in terms of learning... and it would be a shame to miss out!

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Agilitest cards: Gamification to promote knowledge of best practices

Let's face it, it is possible to imagine a lot of workshops and gamification with Agilitest cards as basic material. In this article, I propose 2 of them, in which the main aim is to offer a relaxing moment that will enable participants to develop their knowledge of best practices.

The «post-it game»

I know that it is not its official name but I admit that I don’t know it so much so that I think of this game as a post-it note stuck to our forehead.

The principle:

To stuck a post-it on our forehead (without seeing it) with a concept / a name and to try to guess with the help of the others participants what is written on it.

Educational objectives:

• Detect and correct any misunderstandings of concepts
• Improve participants' understanding of best practices
• Improve participants' skills in explaining best practices
• Improve team communication

The benefits of Agilitest cards:

With Agilitest cards, there is no need for Post-it notes! What you need to find is a quality-related best practice. Each participant must try to find which good practice they represents, using the information provided by there team-mates and the questions they may ask.

As you can see, this allows us to describe certain best practices in our own words, but also to improve group communication. It also helps identify misunderstandings.

Animation tips:

I think it is preferable, in a setting where the emphasis is on learning, for an animator to prepare game sessions well. This preparation should include:

• Selecting the best practices that can be proposed depending on the elements you wish to bring participants to grips with.
• Taking the time after each "discovery" to go back over the description of the context and discuss its definition again if necessary.
• Adding "restrictive" rules, such as no rebus, to keep users guessing about good practice.

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A « Time’s up » of quality

The principle:

A selection of cards representing concepts are to be discovered in 3 distinct phases. Each card must be discovered in each phase. A timer measures the time taken to find all the cards.

Note: this can be done with a single team in time-trial mode or with 2 opposing teams, each with different cards.

The phases are:

• Phase 1: to make someone guess the card, no constraints (apart from giving its name or names from the card's family)faire découvrir la carte, pas de contraintes (à part donner son nom ou des noms de la famille de la carte)
• Phase 2: to make someone guess the card with 1 word
• Phase 3: to make someone guess the card with mime

Educational objectives:

They are pretty much identical to the previous set:

• Detect and correct any misunderstandings of concepts
• Improve participants' understanding of best practices
• Improve participants' skills in explaining best practices
• Improve team communication
• Stimulate the creativity of the team, which has to deal with severe communication constraints

The benefits of Agilitest cards:

Here again, Agilitest cards are a great help. There is no need to create cards, they are diverse and easy to transport. The concepts to be discovered are already written on the cards, and it is possible to have a description of these concepts after the session.

Animation tips:

As with the previous workshop, for educational purposes, it is best to have a host prepare the workshop. This preparation should include:

• A selection of best practices to be discovered during the session. If the session is in team duel mode, there is a balancing act for the concepts they have to guess
• To take the time to review the strategies employed by teams
• To take the time to go back over each of the best practices and talk about understanding them.

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Conclusion

Agilitest cards are a material with great potential. Don't hesitate to take a step back and imagine fun ways of using them to improve your teams' team spirit and knowledge of best practices. In the end, the only limitation, as is it is often the case, is your imagination!

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