Schoolhouse ScrumMaster

This is an exciting week. Kim Mills, the innovative 4th grade teacher using Scrum in her class, is going to a Certified ScrumMaster training. I can't wait to brainstorm with her about applying Agile to the classroom for Extreme 21st Century Learning after she is armed with some serious Scrum know how.
Maybe we can get her to blog here about the experience.


John Miller
The Agile School Blog
Agileschools@gmail.com

Many Eyes Make Education Bugs Shallow

If you search the Internet, it seems everything in education is broke. I am not one of those who think everything is broke.  I see great things happening in schools everyday by teachers.  I do see problems with education, but it is usually not "fat cat" administrators or teachers who do not care.  There are myriad interplaying causes that play into such a complex system.  Because the issues are so complex and diverse, we need many perspectives at the local, state, and national levels to innovate in schools. "Many eyes makes bugs shallow".

Schools tackle their issues behind their own walls.  Educators try to solve their own problems.  Principals, teachers, and administrators gather.  Board members, parents, and students get involved.  This is the root of the issue. Not many fresh ideas come from one group of like minded people. It is too susceptible to group-think and viewing the problem from very limited perspectives.  Some ideas are creative, but usually, they are slightly outside of a very narrow box.  The gravity of the culture and the "way we do things" are sure to keep many creative ideas from launching.  

In addition, the specialities and expertise are education specific in a school or district.  Yet, we need interdisciplinary approaches and expertise.  Schools need experts in marketing, engineering, business, sales, technology, arts, and pretty much everything else.  There is no way a school district has all of these expertise at highly competent levels, nor, can it afford to hire a set of diverse consultants on call to collaborate with.

We need a continuous circulation of ideas and a diverse set of perspectives in an environment that allows for wild collaboration to happen.  Schools, Districts, and their Departments need a safe place to discuss and collaborate with a diverse and passionate crowd who care about their community and education.  They need a place to interact, discuss, brainstorm, laugh, and learn with many others outside of their walls.  

That is why I am very excited that Gangplank is opening up in Avondale, Arizona, a few miles away from my office.

"Gangplank is a group of connected individuals and small businesses creating an economy of innovation and creativity in the Valley. We envision a new economic engine comprised of collaboration and community, where industries come together to transform our culture." - www.gangplankhq.com

What if we add to this,  "a new education and economic engine comprised of collaboration and community, where industries come together to transform our culture and schools".  Imagine a place where experts and innovators are gathered just to talk and collaborate about opportunities and challenges for schools with District leaders and teachers.  To help shape policies and programs.  To get creative ideas to save money. To find unexpected support and opportunities for students and learning. That circulation of fresh ideas outside of the constraints of District walls, could bring fresh innovation, insights and energy into these walls.  Our biggest opportunities in education lie in the cross-pollination of ideas from other industries and areas. There are benefits of copying and pasting solutions from other Districts, but real innovation happens when exploring and exploiting insights and ideas from outside of your own industry.

Of course, it needs to be a safe environment, not one where reporters and mad bloggers are trying to get a story to rub the school's or District's nose in.  It must be able to be open and have vulnerable-based trust in the collaborators.  Perhaps nondisclosure agreements or some other measure of protection. The quickest way for Districts to retreat and fortify behind their walls is bad press.

Gangplank Chandler - Collaborative Space

I have visited and spoke with Gangplank in Chandler many times.  It is an experience which is hard to describe.  People gathered in small groups, sometimes moving between different groups, working on podcasts, playing guitars, designing a new product, or launching a business. A self-organizing primordial ooze of creativity, passions, and ideas.

In fact, I cross-pollinated many of the ideas I saw there into the Technology Department I lead.  I took their collaborative space concept, based on a Cave and Commons approach, and organized our department space in a similar fashion.  When Heatsync Labs, a hackerspace, was setup at Gangplank, is when I first saw kids talking about geometry, without a teacher around or homework assignment due, as they were using a 3D printer and Arduino broads to create real things.  I quickly saw how powerful that could be in the classroom. Today, students are creating and making real things at one of our middle schools with 3D printing. My department was already heading down the road to use Scrum, but, Derek and Jade, who have used Scrum for many years, let my team come to see how they did Scrum at a master level.   Gangplank also triggered my idea of Student Innovation Centers. I thought, "Why can't every school have an open, interdisciplinary, and  collaborative space like this at their school?". If Gangplank was not an opensource environment, I never would have had these insights.  We would be the "same old" department you can see in any District, not a hub of collaboration and innovation. Schools and Districts do not need more of the "same old".

I plan on bringing my team to Gangplank frequently and often, discovering new and diverse ideas, and attracting other creatives at Gangplank to brainstorm how to innovate learning through technology.  I hope other schools and Districts do the same, not just at the Tech Department level, but principals, teachers, administrators, students, and parents.  Let's make educations bugs shallow by stepping outside of District walls and allowing innovations and solutions emerge in a collaborative and immensely diverse community space, one that encourages wild ideas, like the one Gangplank offers.

John Miller
The Agile School Blog
agileschools@gmail.com
http://www.facebook.com/AgileSchools


Obvious Disclaimer: These opinions are my own, not that of my employer, wife, daughter, state, country, political party, the barista that gives me my coffee, hair stylist, gardener, etc...

Over the Rainbow to Extreme 21st Century Learning

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more"

The world of today is very different than that of the 20th Century, which much of our education system is based.  The 20th Century was a much simpler world, although not necessarily easy.  People worked individually on singular tasks, through top down command and control structures.  You had little collaboration or creative thinking by the general workforce.  Problems were solved primarily through defined process controls, in which defined inputs entere a repeatable process that deliver specific and expected outcomes.  The great strides of the industrial revolution was based on such processes, such as Taylor's Scientific Management and Henry Ford's Mass Production System.  The brains of management directed hands and eyes of the worker. Just as Dorthy was swept out of her simple Kansas farm, into a radically new world of Oz, we have left the 20th Century world for a brand new world, operating under different and novel rules, that our schools need to quickly adapt to in order to prepare our students for.

If I Only Had a Left Brain...

In the 21st Century, the Knowledge Age was born with the advent of digital technologies and the Internet. The worker was lifted out of the shop floor to the cubicle, putting her brain to work.  The skills required by the knowledge worker resided primarily in the left brain, such as analysis, logic, computation, and fact retrieval. The paradigm of the 20th Century management still remained the defacto standard, top-down command and control utilizing defined process controls for knowledge workers, called knowledge management.  

If I Only Had A Right Brain

The world is very different today in America from the Industrial Age.  As schools, and many businesses I might add, were just coming to grips with thr Knowledge Age, we already entered a new age.  The Conceptual Economy or Conceptual Age, was initially described by Alan Greenspan in 1997, and later made popular in Daniel Pink's bestselling book, A Whole New Mind. 

"The growth of the conceptual component of output has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but with the ability to create, analyze, and transform information and to interact effectively with others." -Alan Greenspan (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_age)

Conceptual Age skills reside in the right brain, such as, creativity, empathy, collaboration, design, and meaning.  Where knowledge work was about left-minded individuals working individually and together, conceptual work often needs collaboration of diverse whole-brained team members, taking divergent paths to creative solutions.  It is about designing for meaning, emotion, connections, and beauty, as well as function. Take a look at this toothbrush holder design in the image below which transcends commodity function into a design that expresses beauty and fun for the owner.

Conceptual Age Style Toothbrush Holder
From "15 Cool ad Unusual Toothbrush Holders"
http://www.designswan.com/archives/15-cool-and-unusual-toothbrush-holders.html

"The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate" -http://www.danpink.com/whole-new-mind

Not only is the Conceptual Age growing, but, Daniel Pink describes how the left brain knowledge work is being eroded in America due to automation of these skills and the outsourcing to cheaper labor overseas. This does not mean we can abandon these skills, since the left brain skills are still necessary, but no longer sufficient in the Conceptual Economy. Our sense of urgency to implement 21st Century Skills should be at code red!

There is No Yellow Brick Road in a Complex & Flat World

The world today is increasingly more complex.  I use the term complex as defined in the field of Complex Adaptive Systems. Complexity is defined as one that is connected, interdependent, diverse and adapting. The 20th Century was not complex, it was relatively stable and predictable, which is why defined process controls and top-down command and control approaches worked so well.  A complex system generates novel and unpredictable phenomenon, with entities constantly adapting to one another in an interconnected world. Look around, from the flattening of the world, the Cloud, to financial markets, our lives are filled with complex interactions.  The 20th Century model fails miserably in a world of novel and constant changes.   

An empirical process control approach, in which exists variable inputs, a variable process, with emergent outputs along with a bottom-up self-organization style of management, is the approach we should for the 21st Century. Emergent processes in a complex system rely on adaptive decisions of those closest to the action.  Think of the game of chess, where you must adapt and make iterative decisions based on the move of your opponent.  You can not go into a match of chess with a specific, step by step plan, because one must continuously adapt to his opponent's moves.  The gameplay emerges, it is not defined.   A simple path to follow like the Yellow Brick Road can not exist in a terrain that is constantly moving and shifting. One must constantly explore and exploit this dancing landscape and learn to dance with it.

Over the Rainbow to 21st Century Skills

"Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain... [begins to sing 'Over the Rainbow'] " - Dorthy

Permission granted. Source P21.org

21st Century Skills is an attempt to develop students who can tackle 21st Century problems in a complex and conceptual world. It is a great foundation to build on.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills outlines a framework for 21st Century Outcomes and Support Systems.

Learning and Innovation Skills

• Innovation and Creativity
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving 
• Communication and Collaboration

Information, Media and Technology Skills*

• Information Literacy 
• Media Literacy 
• ICT (Information, Communication, and Technology) Literacy

[*John's side note: I believe these Information, Media, and Tech Skills  falls short, which we'll discuss in a future post]

Life and Career Skills

• Flexibility and Adaptability 
• Initiative and Self Direction
• Social and Cross-Cultural Skills 
• Productivity and Accountability
• Leadership and Responsibility

Extreme 21st Century Learning

 "Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." - Wizard of Oz aka Man Behind the Curtain

Like many adoptions of new innovations, we approach the future from where we are, with legacy approaches.  In this case, I fear most schools will be approaching 21st Century Skills armed with 20th Century instruction and tools.  Many of the books and training for schools to adopt 21st Century Skills do just this. We run the risk of walking our students backwards into the future. For example, in a wonderful and free online course created by Intel, 21st Century Assessments**, it suggests for students to keep a problem-solving log so the teacher can assess the skill of problem solving. This 20th Century approach of documentation over demonstration still lingers, serving as a disincentive to student self-directed problem solving & creativity, the explicit goals of 21st Century Skills.  20th Century style burdensome compliance through documented reports and logs kills 21st Century Learning. Our students need more than a diploma. [**Don't get me wrong, these Intel Elements Courses are great, but, there is enough legacy creep to demotivate students to be true 21st Century Learners]

I argue that we must immerse our students in 21st Century environments with a toolkit that has proven to innovate in this conceptual age and removes the impediments toengage in 21st Century Skills. It can not be seen as another standard to adopt or a module to be taught in isolation to the curriculum. It must be taken to their extremes and engrained as the only way we teach and learn, displacing legacy learning that does not add value to an empowered 21st Century Learning environment. 

We have a model of this in the software development world, called Extreme Programming.  Software projects were failing at a staggering rate, being run from a 20th Century engineering approach.  Extreme Programming was born from the question, what if we took the things we know about teams and practices that make great software, and take it to their extremes, and threw out the legacy approaches.  Extreme Programming is uniquely a 21st Century approach, adopted by software teams around the world, due to the amazing success it helps teams achieve. 

We can draw parallels from Extreme Programming to 21st Century Learning. Just as a new 21st Century discipline such as software development, failed miserably when it was managed from a 20th Century paradigm, so will 21st Century Skills fail if instructed and learned in a 20th Century classroom paradigm.  21st Century skills require approaches, environments, and resources that are native to the 21st Century environments. What if we took 21st Century Skills to their extremes? What if we took innovative approaches, environments, and tools that were developed in the real world 21st Century to solve 21st Century problems and applied it boldly to the classroom?

No Yellow Brick Road, yet, There is Still a RACE

The 21st Century landscape dances before our bewildered eyes. A defined path of the Yellow Brick Road crumbles beneath our dancing landscape. In a dancing landscape, we are in a race to adapt and relearn and to toggle between exploration and exploitation. Extreme 21st Century Learning cross-pollinates innovative 21st century approaches to challenges in the real world to the classroom. These 21st Century approaches, combined holistically, is called R.A.C.E..  Real power in Extreme 21st Century Learning comes from using these approaches in an integrated combination, although each component could be used independently.   

• R is for Real and Relevant
• A is for Agile Based Learning Environment [see "Scrum in the Classroom" for a teaser]
• C is for Creative and Makers
• E is for Engaged Passions and Strengths

We'll take a deep dive into each of these in a series of upcoming posts and map how each takes the 21st Century Skills to the extreme using innovative 21st Century approaches. We'll explore the innovative approaches in todays world, such as crowdsourcing, gamification, agile, makerspaces, and design thinking, and cross-pollinate them into Extreme 21st Century Learning. I am very excited to be able to share these ideas and hear what you think!

John Miller

The Agile School Blog

agileschools@gmail.com

Agile is Extreme 21st Century Learning

Bedtime Scrum

"Bedtime Scrum" with my 3 year old daughter

The Problem

My 3 year old would not stay on task to go to bed in time. She would get very distracted ( I think this is a genetic trait inherited from me) which caused her to stay up past her bedtime and make Mommy and Daddy exhausted.

The Solution

We know kids are visual, tactile, and crave empowered. Well, then, Scrum to the rescue!

The Bedtime Scrum Artifacts

On a Sunday night, I quickly made a Bedtime Scrum Board with 3 lanes, a Yellow Light, Green Light, and Red Light. Yellow =To Do, Green =Work In Progress, Red =Done.

I went to the computer and downloaded pictures that would represent her bedtime tasks. We started with storytime, brushing teeth, pajamas, and goodnight. It grew in later iterations to include her Flintstone vitamins, milk, and potty.  I posted the board (easel sticky paper) on her wall , at her height, so she could move each picture.  

The Bedtime Scrum Events

Bedtime Sprint Planning: We scan over all the items in the Yellow column that we need to do for bedtime. I ask her if she can do it all, which has always been a big "Yes!".

The Sprint: She gets to choose which item moves to Green (Work In Progress). I will have to talk to her about some items she chooses if there is a dependency. Such as why brushing her teeth might not be a good idea if she has not finished drinking her milk.  She loves moving the pictures and does not let me touch them. If I encroach on her territory, she races to the board, rightfully exclaiming, "No, Daddy, I want to move it". 

The Review: Once all the items are in Red (Done), I ask her what she has accomplished. She'll reply,  while pointing to each picture with pride, "I put on my pajamas, I drank my milk, I read a story...I did a lot!".  

The Retrospective: I congratulate her for a Bedtime Scrum well done.  I may also suggest something we can try different or improve for tomorrow.

The Bedtime Scrum Results

I believe she enjoys the process because she gets to pull which activities she does, making her more empowered.  She is noticeably more on task and more self-directed.  She will often start pulling a task from Yellow before I even prompt her. The great benefit is that I do not have to nag her to get these tasks done, she is eager to to do it so she can move it to Done herself.  If she does start geting distracted, I ask her what is in Green still or what can move to Green.  I am sure this helps Daddy stay on task also.

What's Next and Insights

My wife would love for me to change how it looks, since it is just a quick and dirty prototype to see if it would work. She has been patient with me since it has been effective.  My next honey-do project is making the board look nice. My daughter wants to color some of the pictures, which will make it more "hers".  

Bedtime Scrum demonstrates how Scrum and Agile is a very natural way to work.  My daughter did not attend project management class or a Certified Scrum Master certification to do it. We are highly visual and tactile and work best in an environment that enables self-empowerment. Agile is so easy, even a 3 year old can do it!

Try this with your young kids and students, I would love to hear your results. Good night, sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite.

Values Driven Retrospective

"Values-driven leadership realizes its full potential when espoused values are embodied by leadership and embraced by the entire organization. This allows for an authentic and sustainable business culture to emerge." -Center for Values-Driven Leadership


I recently developed a highly visible measurement of how the team is living it's Agile values to ensure we sustain and improve.  We used this as part of our monthly department wide Retrospective to ensure we remain value driven.  It also serves as a highly visible reference to reflect on our actions and commitments throughout the day.

Agile Team Values Gauge

Objectives
To continuously improve your team and your work through value-driven Retrospectives.

Dependencies
You need to have defined values that the teams have committed to prior. We use the Agile values of Commitment, Openness, Focus, Respect, and Courage (See Scrumallance.org Code of Ethics) .


When
We do this every monthly staff meeting during a part of the meeting we call the Retrospective, where we discuss how we are progressing as a team. You can do this during any regular meeting or during your Scrum Retrospective.

How

1. The facilitator provides a quick overview of the team values.
2. The facilitator takes a value, and asks the team, to get an initial pulse, "How do you feel we are doing in value x". The facilitator asks the team to rate the value from one to five, using the Fists-to-Five consensus technique.  Make sure to try to get the team to vote all at once, since, some members may be unconsciously influenced by another's vote.  You could also use Planning Poker instead of  Fists-to-Five to gain consensus.
3. The facilitator polls the the group if there is a significant variation in the votes. For example, she might ask, "For the '5's', Why did you vote 5? For the '2's', why did you vote 2?". Allow a short time for discussion, but not too much. Keep it to about 1-2 minutes.
4. Now that the team has a deeper understanding of others perspectives, ask the team to vote again on the value using the  Fists-to-Five. Ask the team to commit to a number from the second round. If there is a significant divide, such as half 4's and half 5's, I take the lower number.
5. Change the dial on the Value Gauge Card to the number agreed to.
6. Do this for each value.
7. Once you are done each value, ask the team: "Which value do we want to improve on until our next meeting?". Gain commitment from the team through discussion and visual vote, such as  Fists-to-Five or thumbs up/thumbs down.
8. Ask the team "What is the one thing we can do to improve living this value?". Stress that it is just one thing, since this brings focus and increases success of the improvement, rather than tackling too much and failing.
9. Allow the team to discuss. Gain consensus and commitment to what the team will do to improve by the next Retrospective/meeting. Phrase the commitment into a Believe Statement: The Believe Statement format is: We Believe in [insert value], therefore we will [insert what we do] .  For example, our team's "Believe Statement" was "We Believe in Courage, therefore we will have a team building get together so we can establish a safer environment to be courageous with one another. "
10. Write the Believe Statement and post it in a visible place for the team.  I prefer placing the Believe Statement on to the Value Gauge Card so it reminds us of our current status and that we are doing something specifically to improve it. It is also handy so that you do not forget to review your results in your next Retrospective.
11. Review your Believe Statement/Goal and the results the next meeting and then repeat the process.

Variations
360 Degree Leadership Feedback
After we completed this as a Team, I quickly went through it and asked the team if I, as the Director, was creating an environment that fostered these values. We went through the same process of rating and creating a one Believe Value Statement Goal.  This allowed some great feedback for how I can improve for the team and also provided a great example to foster, in what the book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" calls, Vulnerable Based Trust.

Apply it in the Classroom with Students
You could easily use this in the classroom with students, as, well. Many schools use the 6 pillars of Character  for character education which could work very well in a Classroom Retrospective. A future post, perhaps.

Summary
My team really enjoyed the Agile Team Values Gauge game. It brought some issues to light, but, more importantly, what we were doing really well.  As we go through several iterations of this retrospective, it might be useful to have a chart plotting our progress over time.

Please try it with your teams and let me know your results and your modifications to it. I think you will find that participants will appreciate talking about their values, their integrity in living their values, and that it provides a good guide for developing Team Working Agreements and other team decisions.

John Miller
The Agile School Blog
CSM, CSPO, PMP, [insert other self important initials here...]

Agile iPad Deployments : Visioning and Bodystorming

In the last Open Scrum Crash Course (see webpage here) I held for other Districts and schools in Arizona, I had a lot of requests to see how we do Agile and Scrum.  This post is an effort to open up our doors to show how we attempt to innovate while having fun using Scrum and Agile techniques. I hope you will find it useful as I post our Agile and playful approach to our big student iPad deployment project in the District.




Develop or Revisit the Vision Statement


First, we co-develop the Vision statement for our iPad project together with the District stakeholders.  Our favorite way is to post the Vision template up on the wall with each participant placing sticky notes in the blanks independently.  We then review the sticky notes, aggregate similar notes into categories, discuss, and gain consensus.  We will quickly refine the wording for each blank based on our consensus. This is timeboxed for 15 minutes, no longer.  We use a very common Vision Statement Template for Agile teams:

FOR (target customer for the product)

WHO (users’ needs) 

OUR PRODUCT IS (the product category)

THAT (major benefit, key functionalities)

UNLIKE (current practice, competition)

OUR PRODUCT (major differentiator)

Our Final Vision Statement.

"For LESD teachers, managed IPads will be used as an educationtechnology device, which provides an engaging experience "at the points of learning". Unlike unmanaged iPads, this solution willprotect student safety and ensure compliance with license agreements."

We had a pretty good debate on who our customer really was, the teachers, the students, administration....

Define User Roles


We developed several roles for the iPad project to help us understand what different stakeholders valued in the iPad deployment.  We use the typical User Story format, As a (user), I want (what), so that I can (value/why). The roles were:

1. iPad Facilitator - This persona for the person who buys the apps, manages vouchers, ensures software compliance for a campus or department.
2. Campus iPad Manager - The person who physically manages the iPads on campus. Usually a teacher or aide. Syncs, charges, inventories, troubleshoots, etc... The Facilitator and Manager could be the same or separate people.
3. "Good" Teacher -  A teacher who uses the iPad for the right educational reasons, while understanding that following policies and procedures are important. (Most if not all of our teachers fit into this role).
4. "Bad" Teacher  - There are always some employees who do not care about the rules and will go rogue. We make these into "anti" stories, stories from a stakeholder which we want to prevent or mitigate.  (These are few and far between, hopefully we have none, but, we have to plan for it).
5. Good Student -Wants to use the iPad to make learning more fun and engaging and follow the rules.
6. "Naughty" Student - wants to sabotage the iPads, use to distract from their education, steal, abuse, use it as a food tray etc..(Unfortunately, we do have a few of these at times. Even good kids have their impulsive moments.)
7. IT Technician - Staff in the IT Department offering technical support for the iPads.
8. Business Office Staff  - Combines several roles here, including the Business Manager and Procurement Director and Staff.  Concerns here are auditing for software compliance and procurement compliance with District policies and State regulations.

We post these roles on a role board with 3 columns. Role, Goal, Value.  As the team went through the bodystorming, it began to fill up with sticky notes, which we then turned into User Stories.

Role Board to Generate User Stories for iPads

Under some of these roles we placed a Responsibility Card underneath, which has 3 columns, Do's, Don'ts, and Support (who/what does this person support).  We filled in the Responsibility card as learning emerged from bodystorming, since, one of the goals of the project is to develop roles and responsibilities for the iPads across the District.

Role with Responsibility Card

Good Teacher/Bad Teacher Roles

BodyStorming 


to Elicit User Stories, Outline Role Responsibilities, &  Develop Processes


A great exploration exercise to elicit stories and understand your constraints is called Bodystorming.

"Bodystorming is a unique method that spans empathy work, ideation, and prototyping. Bodystorming is technique of physically experiencing a situation to derive new ideas. It requires setting up an experience - complete with necessary artifacts and people - and physically “testing” it. Bodystorming can also include physically changing your space during ideation. What you're focused on here is the way you interact with your environment and the choices you make while in it." - dSchool K12 Lab

We create "role tags" for each role that a bodystorming participant will take on. Each participant volunteers and places the tag on them.  You will be amazed at the acting talent in that comes out when people get into their roles!  It is best to have your team and the customer there for their point of view and to have great discussions.

We brought in our configured iPads and iTunes syncing stations so we could truly bodystorm the activities.

We use an artifact I created called, for lack of imagination, "the process table".  I divide the table into vertical columns with painters tape.  On the left side are what we wanted to develop a process for. There are 3 colored sticky notes we used to develop the process and responsibilities. Who? Dos? Don'ts . The colors are not important, it is just a way to quickly look at the table and know what is what. 

I created 7 "Step" columns (Step1, Step2....Step7) that we placed these colored sticky notes in each step of the process. On the opposite side of the table were our Finish lane, with  Acceptance Criteria, in which any process must meet. If the process did not meet the Acceptance Criteria we established, then, we would "reboot" the process, and identify in which Step violated or missed the Acceptance Criteria.  Our Acceptance Criteria included items such as 1)1 App Purchase /Device 2)Must be able to audit for software compliance 3)Can not violate copyright (for music/videos/books).  

Process Table 1

Process Table Pic 2

For example, our first process to bodystorm was how to buy apps though Apple's Volume Purchase Program.   In Step 1: Who? - Teacher who wants an app , Dos?- How do they request an app, Don'ts? - Don't use personal iTunes account on District device . 

A new user story emerged from the discussion as well, which was, "As a Teacher, I want to experiment with new apps, to see if it is a good fit for my classroom" which we added to the Product Backlog.  This will become a process we bodystorm in the future.

Retrospective

This took much longer than I thought to develop the first process. Not because of poor planning or a uncooperative team, but, because every step we took had at least 4 decision paths to take, which we had to try and discuss.  It took us about 2 hours to bodystorm and build consensus on the best process for the District to purchase and deploy iPad apps.  On the other hand, several other processes went very fast once we got through the first.  It was well worth it, not only did we understand the process, but, we understood why the other alternatives were not the right fit. Our team really enjoyed the body storming game. Our retrospective for the meeting:

• What We Liked: Loved the process. Appreciated we got to try each step out instead of just talk about it, which allowed us to bring to the surface what was feasible and make tradeoffs in real time. Enlightening.... Documenting the process is easy since we have it all laid out on the process table in sticky notes.
• What We Did Not Like: One member did not like the "role tags" they put on. I actually liked it, since, I forgot twice I was the "iPad Facilitator", but, I am aging... Maybe I'll leave it to the team next time to decide.  We should have created some "test" accounts before bodystorming (we used our production iTunes and Facilitator accounts).
• Ideas or Insight: The process brought to light many of the constraints we were under. Our solution was surprisingly unexpected, which emerged from real world results.  Great debate on what a user really wanted and how to meet that need.  Once we got one process, some of the other items piggybacked off that process, which made it simple and integrated.  We will definitely do this again.
• What is still Cloudy/Unknown: We did not get through some of the process items we needed to, so, to be continued.....

Developing processes can be fun, engaging, and agile.  I say agile because we built the requirements, iteratively developed the process, and tested the process at one time, a true agile approach.  Please leave a comments and questions and thanks for reading.