Agile is a cooperative game

The connection, in my mind, between agile environments and game environments grows stronger the more I learn more about what motivates people in software development teams. Agile environments provide feedback, engagement, and a sense of flow stemming from iterative development, a shared team room, and surmountable challenges in the form of stories. There are increasing ‘experience points’ as you move up through iterations and develop skills; and there is even a ‘reload’ option, where if everything goes terribly terribly wrong you can always go back and restart from the last time that all the tests were working. Some teams that are keen on information radiators even make good use of buttons and lights, which makes me imagine a truly engaging team room environment modelled after an arcade game :-).

It’s funny how it wasn’t until after I chatted to several people at Agile 2006 about this flow/game idea that I decided it was worth writing down. Go social constructionism.