Short refresher speech on DevOps principles

A casual speech on DevOps principles - Flow, Feedback, and Continuous Learning and Improvement.

Refresher game: 007 Bang

In all-day seminars and workshops, attention typically wanes in the afternoon. Here's a simple game to boost energy levels.

Party game: Storyteller

Here's another interesting party game, suitable for ice breaking and warming up the party. It is essentially a "give-away-the-prize" sort of game, where all participants are expected to win something.

Each round, invite two volunteers to the stage. Each of them will receive a sentence, private to themselves but known to the audience. (This can be achieved, for example, by having the volunteers face the audience and projecting the sentences on the backdrop; be creative!)

The objective of the game is to "join" the sentences, story-wise. The two volunteers take turn to ejaculate a sentence which advances the story. This will be clear with an example. Suppose the first volunteer receives "Once upon a time, there lived a little girl in a cottage with her grandmother." The second volunteer receives, "Finally, they spend the rest of their lives on the International Space Station." Note that the first volunteer is not aware of the second volunteer's target sentence. It is thus entertainment for the audience as the second volunteer tries to drive the story to the end, while the first volunteer blunders about.

Too easy? But alas! There's a catch. The second volunteer CANNOT use any words from his sentence.

As a matter of fact, it is relatively rare for the game to proceed to completion. It is more common for a timer to be employed. Ultimately, the host shall ask the audience if the pair deserves to receive a prize (were they interesting? Funny? Spontaneous?), of which the common response is an affirmation.

Party game: Minority Vote

Here's another interesting party game, suitable for a small to medium group.

Minority Vote consists of several voting rounds. In every round, players must vote for one of two (or more, depending on the number of participants) "options". The options are entirely arbitrary, e.g. male vs. female or red vs. green vs. blue; it is up to the host to decide.

At the end of every round, the votes are tallied. The option receiving the largest number of votes will be disqualified, and all players who voted for that particular option will be eliminated. After a certain interval to allow for interaction among players, the next round commences with the same number of options. The object of the game is to be among the last n remaining participants, of whom all will receive prizes.

The key point of the game is the formation (and betrayal) of alliances. In more advanced gameplay, it is not uncommon to see "bought votes" - players from an alliance choose to vote for a losing option so that their alliance can advance to the next round, and receive part of the prize from the alliance later. Betrayals are also common, with "mini-alliances" forming within alliances.

Party game: Company War

Here's an interesting party game, suitable for 6 teams and above.

Company War is a party game suited for dinners, team building events, etc. It works best when the participants can be divided into 6 groups or more. The gameplay is simple and comprises several voting rounds, ideally spaced out at intervals.

In each voting round, teams must vote to promote either Product A or Product B (replace these suitably, e.g. with your organization's product vs your competitor's product). Teams that vote for Product A will be awarded $10k (again, replace the currencies suitably), whereas those that vote for Product B will be awarded $40k. The points may be traded with other teams, or even donated to charity. However, there are two additional catches:

1. If more than a quarter (or two, whichever is more) of the teams vote for Product B, the competition in the market becomes tough, and instead of getting $40k they will all lose $20k. Those backing Product A remain unaffected and continue to earn $10k.
2. If all the teams vote for Product A, the market becomes saturated and all teams lose $20k. Additionally, a quarter of the teams with the lowest score at that point loses an additional $20k (making a total of $40k), as smaller companies suffer more loss from the financial storm.

The number of voting rounds is theoretically unlimited, but to stay within time constraints (and avoid participants losing interest) a total of 7 rounds is recommended. The total number of rounds must be announced beforehand. After round 3, if participants have not realized already, remind them that they could behave like real companies and actually trade their points, e.g. to form alliances and conglomerates.

At the end of the exercise, debrief the participants on the importance of forming alliances. In particular, remind them that nowhere in the game was stated that the objective is to be the company with the most number of points! They could have worked together to secure maximum gain on the whole. Reveal scores from other collection of companies (Company War conducted at other events), and let them realize that the world is truly much larger than just the companies they see around them today.