Lean Enterprise Software and Systems 2011–Game Day

The last day of the Conference on Lean Enterprise Software and Systems 2011 (LESS2011) was Tutorials & Workshops day. I was asked by the conference organizers to arrange a game day where we would play two games: the MIT Beer Game and the getKanban Board Game.

MIT Beer Game

The game MIT Beer Game is a simulation game of system dynamics. It was introduced in the 60′s by MIT’s Sloan School of Management and further popularized by John Sterman and Peter Senge. The goal of the game is to optimize a supply chain in several stages to meet customer demand while minimizing logistics and warehousing costs.

This game session was led by Rolf Häsänen from EPL Business Institute and I was assisting.

We had two teams playing: KOFF and Karhu. Both teams played well with high spirit and lots of fun. Team Karhu won with a cost of approximately $1700 and team KOFF was around $3300

Here are some of my pictures

 

Links

System Dynamics Society
System Dynamics Conference, July 22 – July 26, 2012
Training and education
MIT System Dynamics in Education project
WPI distance learning on System Dynamics
Masters in System Dynamics
Supply chain
The MIT Beer Game
The Beergame in business-to-business eCommerce courses – a teaching report
Chain reaction – Managing a supply chain is becoming a bit like rocket science

Software simulations for System Dynamics
Vensim
Ithink

The getKanban Board Game

The getKanban Board Game is a physical board game designed to teach the concepts and mechanics of Kanban for software development in a class or workshop setting. It has been described as the most effective way to teach Kanban. It’s hands-on, engaging, and fun. The getKanban Board Game is frequently used in Kanban training classes around the world.

This game session was led by me.

We had one game running. It was a very engaged team that played with high energy and intense discussions. People were suppose to leave early but we stayed on for most of the afternoon. The sessions was so intense so I didn’t remember to take any pictures of the team playing but here is the result and the charts.

 

Closing notes

Thank you to all who attended and made this a great final day of LESS2011.

Thank you Rolf Häsänen for running the MIT Beer Game on your own time. Thank you Avega Group and Mattias Skarin and Crisp for the getKanban Board Games.

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Unboxing the getKanban game

I will run a workshop at DevSum 11 where we will play this game. If you are interested please sign up here 

I just love the unboxing video’s and blog posts of cameras and mobile phones so I couldn’t resist doing my own unboxing of the getKanban game. So here we go.

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After some weeks of anticipation the getKanban game finally arrived. But I was not home when Posten tried to drop it off

So today when I came home and the pick up notification was in my mail box I dropt everything and drove to Posten and picket up my package.

This is how the box looks like when I picked it up.

After some help from my son we cut the package open and we almost cut off the strap!

I pulled the strap and out came this great looking bag!

I carefully opened the bags zipper and out came this content:

• A Facilitator’s Guide
• One Game Instruction
• Two transparent bags of markers, playing cards, dices and some post-it notes
• Two green Game board bags
• One white mystery bag(don’t know what it is for yet)

I opened one of the transparent bags.

I then opened one of the Game board bags. This is the content:

• More Game instructions
• One Cumulative Flow Diagram card
• One Control Chart card
• One Financial Summary card
• One Daily Steps card
• And the Kanban board

I really looking forward to trying this game out with the family this coming weekend!

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On a final serious note.

Do you want to really understand Kanban for software development? The getKanban Board Game is the quickest, most effective way to teach the principles and mechanics of Kanban. Leave a comment or contact me on twitter for some Kanban training, consulting or just to play the game.