1. Fearless Journey
Søren Weiss
Agile Coach
reflections after playing the game Twitter: @sorenweiss

2. About this presentation
• The presentation serves to share my reflections on using the
Fearless Journey game at a scrum retrospective.
• I played the game with a Danish scrum team (8 team
members) in March 2012.
• The team had finished their 3rd sprint. Yet 3 sprints
remained in the project.
• The team members were (apart from 2 team members) all
used (more than 1 year of experience) to work in a scrum
team and used to participate in a retrospective.

3. About the game
• The game is invented at the
Play4Agile 2011 conference in
Germany.
• The game teaches teams to
address obstacles based on
influence strategies developed
by Linda Rising and Mary Lynn
Mann. These strategies are
published in the book Fearless
Change.
• Detailed information about the
game can be found here: http://
bit.ly/fearlessjourney

4. Reflections - page 1
• Before playing the game we decided to set a time frame of two hours for playing the game. It
turned out that everybody was quite exhausted after the two hours. I will use this as a guideline
for setting the time frame in the future. The team managed to handle 10 obstacles during the
game.
• Before playing the game I split the team up into two groups. Each group drafted a description
of the "start state" (current state of the project) and the "goal state" (the goal of the project).
These descriptions were presented and updated before game start.
• As input to the "write obstacles" activity I facilitated a timeline exercise (from project start up
until now). This provided a good common view on the project and helped the team to identify
obstacles.
• Before game start I asked everybody to write a number (1-10) on a index card. The number
represented the level of difficulty to go from the start to the end of the project. This served as a
baseline. After the game ended we did another round. Finally we disscussed the numbers and
the players elaborated on their viewpoints. This was a very good disscussion and worked fine
as a defrief exercise.

5. Reflections - page 2
• The team members identified obstacles in two groups.
This was an attempt to reduce the amount of obstacles
as well as to increase the quality of the content. It turned
out that there were quite many obstacle card. Within the
time frame it was possible to address only about 25% of
the obstacles. The next time I play the game I will
consider to rank the obstacles before playing the game.
The idea of this is to make sure that the team will address
the most important obstacles within the time frame of the
game.

6. Youtube: http://bit.ly/HzPCY5

7. Reflections - page 3
• The game rules says to put in "joker" cards in the obstacles card deck. I don't
really understand the purpose of this... I have chosen to keep these joker cards in
the deck, however I have decided to create a new rule: "whenever a player draws
a joker card from the obstacles deck, the player can collect a piece of candy (or
another "prize"). Of course this serves just as a bit of amusement during the game.
• Before playing the game I told the team members that they should consider the
influence strategies as strategies of inspiration. This turned out to be an important
modification as it was rather difficult for the team members to use the strategies as
they were defined in the cards. Several times during the game, team members
introduced ideas based on one of the influence strategies.
• Because it was rather difficult to play the strategy cards I introduced a new rule: "If
a team member hadn't played any strategy card for two rounds, the person could
choose to draw two new cards from the deck and lay back two cards into the
deck". This rule increased inspiration and motivation.

8. Reflections - page 4
• I am wondering whether it will
possible to create a set of
action which are more "down to
earth" and easier to understand/
implement rather than the "high
level" strategies... I guess this
could be an interesting project
to work on... I read an article the
other day and saw that Mary
Lynn Manns and Linda Rising is
working on a set of new
influence strategies to be
published soon. I am very
excited about that and look
forward to read more about their
great work.

9. Reflections - page 5
• When the team members decided to overcome an obstacle I introduced a new rule: "All
disscussion are timeboxed". This was needed as the disscussions went on and on... The
team decided to spend 5 minutes (tip: use a visible stop watch. I used an iPad) to
disscuss how to overcome the obstacle using one or more strategies. After that one
person from the team volunteered to own the action during the next sprint. The person
then documented the actions that the team decided on. The SMART goal technique was
used for this.
• It is a good idea (as mentioned in the rules) to let the team decide whether to take action
or not on the obstacles. We used democratic voting. The teammembers voted without
influencing eachother. I introduced the rule that the minority party could choose to
elaborate on their viewpoint. After this another voting round was conducted. Everybody
felt that there opinion was heard and this approach is very similar to the rules of planning
poker, so the team members were used to the concept.
• Whenever a player was finished the person drew one or more strategy card so everyone
always had 5 cards at hand. I introduced this rule to increase motivation and creativity.

10. Reflections - page 6
• Used strategy cards were put back into the strategy card deck to be reused.
• With very much focus on obstacles during the game I suggest to let the game be
followed by an appreciative exercise, e.g. "Medals & Bouquets".
• The game objective is to "address obstacles over which you have no influence".
Many of the obstacles the team face in a retrospective are often within the limit of
influence of the team. Despite of this conflict I still think the game is very useable in
a retrospective.
• My overall experience from playing the game is that it made for the more introvert
team members to speak up more freely during disscussions. It also was an exciting
new frame work for disscussions. it seemed to me that team had more fun than
they usually have during retrospectives. The team might however have been able to
produce more actions using another exercise than Fearless Journey... Anyhow I will
certainly use the game again to get more familiar with the rules and the techniques.

11. Twitter: @sorenweiss
Youtube: http://bit.ly/HzPCY5