Unbox. Roll. Compose. That’s pretty much it. Oh, you have to compose a haiku using only the words that are face-up on the 63 cubes when you roll them and the haiku has to be around a theme (there’s a cube for themes). Take out the theme cube and you have a great and creative agile tool.
They’re called Haikubes and they’re available for $15 on amazon.com.
Haiku is a very short form of Japanese that has simple rules
- A haiku consists of three lines and 17 syllables. The first line contains 5, the second 7, and the third 5.
- Typically the first and third lines are images play off of each other with the second line being a sort of verb connecting the two images.
Here are two examples of haikus on Agile from “The Agile Fieldbook,” a blog by Gregory Paul Engel.
Agile? What the ****?
This is not familiar! Stand up. Now step two. |
Help! Show me the way!
Acceptance criteria. The path is made clear. |
Pick a theme like “tell a story about the sprint” and these connect to the essentials of an Agile retrospective —
- They fully break the Team away from their devices
- The Team has to talk about different story options to tell until they find one that works with the 63 words at hand
- The simple rules provide both clarity and boundaries for the Team
- It’s challenging but fun
- The Team shares their story at the end
Give it a try and let me know how it works for your Team.