Breaking down your work

Unsure why breaking down your work is so important? Ever heard of the penny game?

The penny game would be great for any type of agile workshop. Your team members will need to sit around table with 10 pennies. 

In round 1, the first person flips all 10 pennies, the next person along does nothing until the first person has finished. The work then get handed off to person 2. No one starts work until the person before them have finished.

Round 2 and 3 focus on breaking the work down further into smaller batches. Each time, the first batch is delivered to the customer quicker (providing value and feedback) and the whole task is completed quicker too.

This activity really shows the value of breaking down your user stories into small chunks. Each story needs to provide some value to the customer but breaking these items down into smaller chunks essentially means that the customer can not only get value early but also provide extremely useful feedback whilst the team continues to build out the feature. The early you can hear "That is exactly what we were hoping for, but can you make these few tweaks", the better :)