Position Papers OrgTeam


Position Papers of the Play4Agile Organiser's team - moved from Position Papers P4A

 

Martin Heider

I’ve been working for more than 17 years in the IT business. As freelancer I've supported my clients in several roles, e.g. as developer, architect, test and integration manager, team and development lead. My experience covers international, distributed projects and teams of different sizes. Since 2005 I’m working as mentor and coach for teams and projects. In this role I help them to adapt agile values, principles and practices. I’m involved in several community activities, e.g. as organizer of this Play4Agile event, Agile Coach Camp 2010 and 2011, member of the advisory board of XP Days Germany 2010, Track Chair of JAX Agile Interactive Day and moderator of the Agile Monday in Nuremberg. I'm speaker at several conferences and I value the effects of games and simulations, because I like to have participants in the center of action and the facilitator more in the back of the room. I've facilitated several simulations and participated even more.

 

I want to learn about new games and simulations that I don't know so far. Furthermore I'm interested how people have used simulations and games that I already know. What are interesting variations? What are their experiences, what failed or worked and why? I hope to learn more about inventing games. I’m looking forward to meet other agile coaches kicking me out of my box and providing me with new insights. Last but not least I’m really excited to see all those agile companions inspired by similar values, principles and practices, sharing their stories and experiences regarding simulations and games.

 

One contribution was to be one of the initiators of this event :-) . Furthermore I want to participate as player and facilitator of games and simulations. And I will share my experience in giving honest feedback, asking questions and gently creating waves. You can contact me via Twitter @martinheider, Skype martin.heider, Xing or read my blog (german).


Olaf Lewitz

I'm an agile coach and change agent from Berlin, Germany.

I inspire teams and companies to change the way they work, to have more fun while becoming more effective.

I love playing games, and I love using playful methods to find inspired solutions for challenges in our work environment.

Last year I became a StrategicPlay facilitator and have been astonished by the way Lego can be used to inspire strategic and creative thinking.

I expect to learn a lot from more experienced playwrights and fun mongerers, and I tend to share a lot of my thoughts and ideas.

Don't be surprised if I bring a rugby ball.

I'm @OlafLewitz on Twitter, Olaf.Lewitz on Skype...

Motto: "When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go." (NannyMcPhee)

I have a blog, and if you insist I might even write something on it again... http://hhgttg.de/blog/


Marc Bless 



I work as an internal agile coach for a medical technology company. As more and more teams and individuals are involved in applying agile practices, I want to use more and more agile games in my training and coaching sessions.

 

There's a very specific topic I'd like to address at this unconference: are there any agile games available for a single indivual to play? If not, let's design one or two. I want to have single-person agile games for management staff to demonstrate and convince agile principles, and for technical staff joining an existing agile team.

 

Get in contact with me via Twitter @marcbless or read my blog http://marcbless.blogspot.com


Christine Neidhardt

I contribute and support companies, teams and individuals with my company ecomenta in Fürth (Bavaria) to create an environment for development and learning which is playful and light. Which means an open and secure culture, where reflection and feedback as well as listening are important values. My main work is titled process facilitator, leadership and teamtrainer, coach for personal development. In this work I came across the agile manifesto 2006 and found these ideas very interesting to interact with and to try and see what I can introduce in my work. I started to visit agile conferences and did my CertifiedScrumMaster course this year.

 

Since I'm as well an innergame trainer, all my workshops are based on movement, interaction, reflection and games as far as possible. I use juggling balls, ropes, drawing, darts, mikados f.e. to create a game that gives you learnings about the workshop content. You can find more about me under www.xing.com/profile/Christine_Neidhardt or follow me under @teamfuture17 in twitter or visit my website under www.ecomenta.de

I am looking forward to learn, exchange and develop more games which I can use in my management work. Specially I'm interested in games which do not need much or no material, but are very deep in insights and flexible for teams. I like also to do some fuzzy games for fun and energy. Like I did already in the accde10, I am prepared to contribute games which can be used for reflection for individuals and teams from my innergame background. More about innergame can be found under www.innergame.de


Heiko Stapf

Hi, after quite a long time in the same job for about 12 years I started to work as an independent Agile Coach and Agile Project Manager. Quite some years ago I started with Scrum in a very process oriented way but I gathering more and more experience over the years realized that I need to focus on the people involved in the process. I am just finishing a one year long Business Coaching Seminar with a very committed trainer and I really love this whole set of tools from this "traditional" source. Currently I am writing my thesis for the seminar. The topic is about Agile Leadership and how people change within an agile transition.

 

When I am doing Agile Workshops I am very interested in using games to make the theory "experienceable". By now I consumed games provided by the community like Ball Point Game, Marshmallow Challenge, XP Game... But I like to go a step further and help to create new games and simulations. Being a passionate (ex-)gamer (especially freeform games like www.krimispiel.net (german)) I think I can bring some input. Especially the freeform game concept is something I'd like to discuss at the conference.

 

You can find me on xingweb(german) or contact me on twitter @criamon

 


Jens Korte

I love to inspire people to try things in a different manner to be more efficient and have more fun and satisfaction at work. As a consultant, coach and trainer I empower my customers to go new ways. As one of the community coordinators of "Agile Saxony" and "Agile Developers Berlin" I'm spreading agile thinking and fostering the exchange of experience.

 

I'm very interested in Asian culture and I experienced the roots of the agile thinking in Japan. I learnt that Japanese people have systems thinking in their blood. But they don't call it systems thinking. They only say "everything is connected with everything". For us western people, that's maybe too fuzzy, too esoteric. We prefer analytical and scientifically correct descriptions of the world.

 

I'm sure that games help us to switch from a linear analytical view to a nonlinear, holistic view, so we can understand complex situations intuitively. This is one reason I'm helping to organize this Play4Agile event. Another reason is that I want to explore and develop games for training and coaching. 

 

With AgileFluenca I try to visualize the influences and connections of the Agile movement. It's inspired by Mark Lombardy and James Burke's Connections

You find me in St. OberholzxingLinkedIn and you can follow me on twitter @JensKorte.

 


 

Jens Hoffmann

 

Hi! I'm in Innovation, Change Management and Project Management for medium sized and large international companies. As a highly Integrative Thinker, Entrepreneur amd Executive Management Consultant with strong ties in the business and technology world I live an action and result orientied working style which is connecting strategic visions to implementation. This is why I enhance playful approaches to leverage the collective intelligence for long term strategic planning. Being a certified LEGO SERIOUS PLAY™ facilitator myself my company Hoffmann Consulting GmbH has been partner of LEGO® for LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY™ for years. Inspired by that I started the brandStrategicPlay® in 2006 together with my partners, Katrin Elster and Jacqueline Lloyd-Smith. This is what I want to share and also leverage with the Play4agile un-conference!

Find me via:

http://twitter.com/#!/jenshoffmann  http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenshoffmannstrategicplay

 

 

 

 


Katrin Elster

 

Hi! I'm Mrs. StrategicPlay® which is great for systematic business creativity, collaboration and co-creation. This is our playful approach for Un-consulting for (re)inventing companies’ business strategies, (re)starting projects or (re)focussing teams.

I started as a Business Process Analyst and specialist for Governance and Risk Management Processes in IT projects, but I am now trainer/head of StrategicPlay®. My expertise is co-creation and participatory design for organisational learning and transformation. Being a certified LEGO SERIOUS PLAY™ facilitator myself my company Hoffmann Consulting GmbH has been partner of LEGO® for LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY™ for years. Inspired by that I started the brand StrategicPlay® in 2006 together with my partners, Jens Hoffmann and Jacqueline Lloyd-Smith. We all trust in the applied use of strategic creativity to help people, teams and organizations to become more effective at solving their problems better, cheaper, and faster. This is what I want to share and also leverage with the Play4agile un-conference!

 

You might want to join our community of the Strategic Playroom, open for everyone interested in systematic innovative & creative methodologies to improve business performance.

Find me on twitter as http://twitter.com/#!/strategicplay or http://twitter.com/#!/cuxdu or on http://de.linkedin.com/in/katrinelster


Thorsten Oliver Kalnin

 

 

Bonjour!

 

I started to develop software as a young guy of thirteen years in 1985. As all my friends were playing software games on their c64 machines, I’ve had a misfit computer called mz-821 where no games were available – so I started to learn how to program games for my own on my machine.

Now I’m working for more than 13 years in the IT world, started as professional Software developer in 1996 and become a project manager in IT business.later. For nearly 3 years now I’m working as an experienced ScrumMaster and Facilitator in an innovative HealthCare Technology company in germany.

For Facilitating all the Scrum Meetings we’ve had in the past, I was searching for some fast and short games to start my meetings in a laid back mood. So I discovered the first games for teambuilding. As our company started an Agile Transition last year I adopt to become a Change Agent, what is still happening, to support this Transition and try to help Teams to change their way of work.

 

I was absolutely excited when I get in touch with agile games for the the first time and was surprised how creativity gets pushed by doing agile games. Find solutions for complex challenges by doing open minded and serious game-playing let me felt that hard work could be like a walk in the park! What a wonderful experience!

 

As a part of the organizers team I want to share my experience and want to learn from the others. I want to learn more methods letting people doing a great job by serious and agile gaming.

 

You can find me on xing 


Deborah Hartmann Preuss

 

Hello, I am Deborah Hartmann Preuss, a Canadian Agilist transplanted to Germany two years ago. I'm a Scrum coach, Open Space facilitator, Newfield team effectiveness coach, and Co-Active personal coach. I'm married to Ilja Preuß, also an Agile coach and facilitator, and we live in Karlsruhe, DE (and work in Trier, DE right now). Find me on the web at http://deborahpreuss.com

 

My mission: increase joy in the workplace. I am passionate about making work valuable and rewarding, and I thrive on helping teams and their customers discover the best ways to do this, starting from wherever they are on the process spectrum: be it high-control, chaotic or in-between.

 

I use games to help people remember what it feels like to be practical and effective at work. Here is a video of The Chair Game I use with teams to talk about distributed and multi-team communication: (uh oh! the video has disappeared from agilecoachcamp.org! gotta find and fix that!!)   I use games to let clients try on new behaviours with low risk. Everyone brings different work experiences to my training, and I could either take a week to come up with a personalised training program for each one, or I could use a game and let each one connect the dots in the way that is helpful to them in their context. I choose to play games. In addition, having fun is shown to improve retention of learned material! Well, yelling at them would work too... emotion is what's needed. Again: I choose the fun way :)

 

I guess I am somewhere in the middle of the scale of game-ness - I can teach some basic games/tools that team members and leaders can take back to their workplaces, and I hope to learn some new or exotic ones from those more advanced in making and using games. I also want to meet some cool people to follow on Twitter, to increase the likelihood of wonderful accidental intersections of ideas in the future!


Ilja Preuß

I love playing games, and I think that games and simulations are one of the most powerful tools for learning. When I teach or train, I like to rely heavily on hands on experiences, and since doing "the real thing" often isn't an option, games are the next best thing - or even better, when they allow us to focus on an aspect of what we are doing that easily gets overlooked in day to day routine.

 

I would like to learn more games, of course, but also on how to select - and adapt - the right game, and especially on how to get better on debriefing. I expect lots of hand-on experiences from this conference, of course!

 

I plan to contribute my passion and attentiveness to detail - and perhaps a game or two that some of you might not yet know.