Updates:

• Also available on Amazon in Paperback at amazon.com/9492119161
• Also available in Spanish: El Juego de Autoevaluación Ágil

The Agile Self-Assessment Game is used by teams and organizations to self-assess their agility. Playing the game enables teams to reflect on their own team interworking, discover how agile they are and decide what they can do to increase their agility to deliver more value to their customers and stakeholders.

This is the first book specifically about Agile Self-assessments. In this book, Ben Linders explains what self-assessments are and why you would do them, and explore how to do them using the Agile Self-assessment Game. He's also sharing experience stories from people who played the game.

This book is based on his experience as a developer, tester, team leader, project manager, quality manager, process manager, consultant, coach, trainer, and adviser in Agile, Lean, Quality and Continuous Improvement. It takes a deep dive into self-assessments, viewing them from different perspectives and provides ideas, suggestions, practices, and experiences that will help you to do effective agile self-assessments with your teams.

The book is aimed at Scrum masters, agile coaches, consultants leading agile transformations, developers and testers, project managers, line managers, and CxOs; basically for anyone who is looking for an effective way to help their agile teams improve and to increase the agility of their organization.

To play the game described in the book, please buy a package that includes the cards. Currently available are:

• Agile Self-assessment Game - English edition: The book (in English) with 52 basic Agile cards and expansions packs for Scrum (39 cards), Kanban (52 cards), DevOps (26 cards) and Business Agility (26 cards). Total of 195 English cards!
• Juego Autoevaluación Ágil - Spanish edition: The book (in English) with 52 basic Agile cards in Spanish and expansions packs in Spanish for Scrum (39 cards), Kanban (52 cards), DevOps (26 cards) and Business Agility (26 cards). Total of 195 Spanish cards!
• Agilní sebehodnotící hra - Czech edition: The book (in English) with 52 basic Agile cards in Czech and expansions packs in Czech for Scrum (39 cards), Kanban (52 cards), DevOps (26 cards) and Business Agility (26 cards). Total of 195 Czech cards!
• Gra Agile Self-Assessment - Polish edition: The book (in English) with 52 basic Agile cards in Polish and expansions packs in Polish for Scrum (39 cards), Kanban (52 cards), DevOps (26 cards) and Business Agility (26 cards). Total of 195 Polish cards!
• Agile Zelfevaluatie Kaarten - Dutch edition: The book (in English) with 52 basic Agile cards in Dutch and expansions packs in Dutch for Scrum (39 cards), Kanban (52 cards), DevOps (26 cards), and Business Agility (26 cards). Total of 195 Dutch cards!
• Jeu de cartes d’autoévaluation Agile - French edition: The book (in English) with 52 basic Agile cards in French. Total of 52 French cards!

Additional cards can be bought in the Agile Games webshop.

More information can be found on the Agile Self-assessment Game website.

"Yu-kai is at the cutting edge of the field of behavior design."

               -Nir Eyal, Author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

This book is not about why gamification is amazing. It is not about how gamification is the future and how inspiring life could be with it. It is not necessarily for the late adopters who are simply curious about what gamification is. It also does not focus on what the gamification industry is doing as a whole, especially when that is continuously changing every month. Rather, this book is about *implementing good gamification design* into your products, workplace, and lifestyle.

It is a deep exploration into what makes a game fun and how to apply those fun and engaging elements in real-life productive activities. It is about how you can use gamification and scientifically proven methods to improve your company, your life, and the lives of those around you.

Effective gamification is a combination of game design, game dynamics, behavioral economics, motivational psychology, UX/UI (User Experience and User Interface), neurobiology, technology platforms, as well as ROI-driving business implementations. This book explores the interplay between these disciplines to capture the core principles that contribute to good gamification design. I will be sharing my observations in multiple industries and sectors based on my 12-year journey of passionately and relentlessly pursuing the craft of Gamification.

Chapters of this book tend to build on previous chapters, so skipping around is not suggested. That said, if you have been an avid reader of my work and viewer of my videos, you might already have a firm grasp of the 8 Core Drives within the Octalysis Framework. In that case, feel free to skip to a section that you want to hone in on.

If you are extremely busy (which chances are - you are) and aren't sure if you want to commit to this book, I recommend starting off with Chapters 3, 5, 10, 14, and 15 to decide whether you would like to read the entire book.

Within the book, there will be many every-day scenarios to illustrate the potential of these Core Drives and the flexibility of their applications beyond traditional “gamification” examples. I myself still constantly gain new insights and revelations when I reflect and speculate upon the various possibilities contained in the 8 Core Drives. I hope you do too.

As this book is titled “Actionable Gamification,” my goal for this book is to become a strategy guide to help my readers master the games that truly make a difference in their lives. If you absorb the contents of this book, you will have literally obtained what many companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to acquire.

My ultimate aim is to enable the widespread adoption of good gamification and *human-focused design* in all types of industries. I care deeply about creating a world that is sustainably more enjoyable and productive. In that world, there no longer will be a great divide between what people have to do and what they want to do - our lives become better as we spend time enjoying everything we do.

I'm excited for you to dive into the contents of this book so that we can start to build a world that harnesses the *power of play together*. Let's begin.

Yu-kai Chou (Written February 14th 2014) 

“Yu-kai’s reputation precedes him in the field of gamification. His Octalysis framework is both elegantly simple and intricately complex. His book is not only extrinsically rewarding to read, but intrinsically motivating to apply; it’s wickedly effective, and yet divinely true. Octalysis brilliantly unified all these seemingly conflicting aspects of gamification into a single cohesive framework with a hidden twist in the middle of it—it’s sensational.”

                   -Michael Wu, Chief Scientist @ Lithium

lego4scrum has been known since the first paper written back in 2009. Since that time thousands of people facilitated this business simulation to demonstrate the power of the Agile principles and the Scrum framework.

This book combines the learnings of the past eight years facilitating lego4scrum workshops with groups of 10 to 150 participants.

This book is written for:

• Scrum Trainers exploring way of adding more elements of interactivity and gaming into the trainings turning them more to “from the back of the room” kind of things.
• Agile Coaches looking for new training and coaching ideas with some elements of serious plays and simulations.
• Scrum Masters willing to get ideas how to introduce agile thinking to new teams and newcomers in a fun and easy way.
• Professors and Teachers trying to adapt their teaching style to the ever-changing world that is full of games, fun and LEGO.
• Anyone else who is in charge of "installing Agile thinking and Scrum in a workspace".

lego4scrum incorporates the following popular agile coaching techniques:

• user story mapping
• magic estimates
• overall backlog refinement with multiple teams
• joint multi-team scrum meetings
• continuous integration and deployment
• and more little tips and tricks to make the simulation valuable and fun.

Get the book, get some LEGOs and have fun with this.

It's taken us several years to master the skill of facilitation, and it continues to amaze us how few people learn the skill, or even understand what it means. People spend much of their lives in meetings, and yet so many meetings lack facilitation. We hope the collection of tips and techniques in this book will inspire you to grow your own facilitation skills and improve the meetings in your organisation.

Anyone who attends meeting can benefit from this book. However we are specifically aiming the book at people who regularly run meetings, workshops or training sessions. You might call yourself a facilitator or trainer, but more likely you have another title and meetings are just how you interact with others to get things done. 

Over the years we have played various games with individuals and teams to illustrate the value of collaboration. The games are fun and non-threatening which allow for great learning experiences. Many people have AH-HA moments when playing games.

You know how you learn how to ride a bike as a kid, and then years later, you are able to hop on and cycle? That’s muscle memory. Your muscles remember what they are supposed to do and how they need to work together to keep you on the bike and keep the bike going. We like to think of the games as emotional memory. During the game each person experiences certain emotions that they remember. One day a situation will arise and those emotions will emerge, they will recall the game and their emotions, and be able to apply the lessons they learned during the game.

We hope you enjoy these games & techniques - we certainly love them. Each time we facilitate these games we learn new things!

In the book "Agile Tools, Agile Practices: Agile Working 4.0" you will find a clear summary of the most important agile framework Scrum, Kanban, Design Thinking, Lean Startup and the most important on the topic Daily Standup and Retrospectives, as well as a compact presentation of the most important agile values and principles. Now with an additional sixth chapter: "The master plan for a little more agility" (as of 03.12.2017).

Change (and adapting to it) needs to become an ingrained habit and this is a simple way to do so with any coaching technique.

Coaching is becoming widely acknowledged and people realize just how effective it can be.

Coaches use various types of tools and methods for life coaching, personal coaching, career coaching and many more…after all, Coaching is about getting the very best out of someone and enabling them to make decisions that will improve their life.

This book is a tool, a booster to use with all of these different coaching methods. It's  a booster for coaching results, to allow every coach in every  field and level of coaching, to take the coaching to a new level, suitable for dealing with a rapidly changing environment.

The world around us is changing, and fast. It is becoming more and more complicated and the pace of technological change is one of the highest in recorded history. Naturally, this new reality creates new challenges. The goals that we want to achieve, for example, can be ever-changing – and therefore seem unachievable. 

To face these challenges, we need strategies that will help us regain a feeling of control over our goals, and help us reach them. We need ideas that will enable us grow and flourish, while at the same time help us face the uncertainties of change. 

The need to develop new strategies and ideas, and adapt to changes, is at the heart of many coaching processes. Why? Because as coaches, we recognize our coachees' universal need to deal with change. They need to understand what needs to be changed, and they need to learn how to both preserve their newfound behavior so that it doesn't dissipate within a week or two, and how to easily change again when needed. 

Based on Lean and Agile methods, our Coaching Booster teaches people how to see change as a habit, and embrace change as a way of life. This book will help people leave their comfort zone, turn dealing with new changes into a habit, and help them change our their habits effectively and quickly, all while demonstrating how it can be repeated in the future.

Lean and Agile methods boost productivity, promote innovation and have been tested (and proven) in real-life situations. They have achieved better results than any other method so far. The Booster also introduces a framework that helps you coach easier, working together with your coachees towards the goals they have developed themselves. 

The Booster is written to be simple and intuitive, showing you how to simplify the complex environment of change in which we live. This makes it easier for us to set goals and establish a vision, as well as cope with changes. 

It's not that the questions we ask, as coaches, are not suitable anymore; it's not that the goals and value we help the customer realize have lost their relevance; it’s the way we manage the flow that leads to achieving these goals that has become unsuitable for rapidly changing environments.

Anyone can use it, anyone can take the framework suggested, follow a few simple principles and apply it to any kind of coaching method.

This book was written out of our experience as Agile coaches, dealing with rapidly changing environments. All we did is merely collect these amazing tools and present them here for your use.

Enjoy :)