The Perfection Game

• Presenters: Marko van der Puil, Jan Bakker and Bas van Tiel
• Type: Interactive Workshop
• Duration: 60 minutes
• Audience: Everyone giving or receiving feedback, no technical knowledge required

Abstract

The Perfection Game is a protocol for positive and constructive, incremental feedback created by Jim and Michele McCarthy. It is described in this book: Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision by Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy (ISBN 0201604566) and website: http://www.mccarthy-tech.com http://www.mccarthy-tech.com/thecore10.pdf

During this session people will participate in three iterations of trivial, non-technical tasks, for which they will sollicit and provide positive feedback to eachother. At the end we will wrap up with sharing our experiences and discussion. The results will be posted on-line.

The organisers stress they have no relationship to the creators of the protocol and are merely interested in examining its use as an agile tool.

Benefits of attending

Giving feedback without hurting someone's feelings is hard! Participating in this session will give you the chance of experiencing a way to give constuctive critisism on someone's performance in a positive way.

What will the organisers learn

We hope to learn of the usefulness and application of the perfection game as a tool (to learn) to receive and supply feedback. In which situations it can be useful (or not). We hope to learn more of other people's expiriences with the perfection game and examine possible other areas of application.

Session Outline

Protocol

1. Players sit in a circle.
2. Each person in the circle names a task that he believes to be simple and that the individual is willing to perform throughout the game—for example, "snapping my fingers," "whistling a short tune," or "acting dead."
3. The first player performs the task named in step 2. This performance has the following structure:
   • The player alerts the rest of the group to the beginning of the performance by saying, "Okay, I'm starting now." Everything the player does after this point is subject to perfecting.
   • The player performs his task.
   • The player says, "I'm done." Everything up to but not including this statement is subject to perfecting.
4. The remaining players rate the player's performance on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is a perfect performance of the task. The rating must be supported with critical analysis of a particular form: After saying the score (for example, "I give your performance a 7"), the scorer must state the following:
   • Specifically, what about the performance was good and what earned the points in the score.
   • Specifically, what the performer must do in the next iteration of the performance to be awarded a perfect 10.
5. The next player then performs his task and is rated by the rest of the group as described above.
6. Steps 1–4 are completed two more times, so that each player performs and is rated three times. Each person plays the role of critic for the rest of the team members in between each of his own performances.

Timetable

• 00 - 10 Short introduction and explanation of the Perfection game
• 10 - 20 1st Iteration
• 20 - 30 2nd Iteration
• 30 - 40 3rd Iteration
• 40 - 50 Share experiences
• 50 - 60 Discussion and wrap-up

Outputs

Outputs of the session will be shared on-line at the conference wiki.

History

This session was run before at XPNL Meeting 5.10 - xpnl:XpBijeenkomst5_10.html