David shared a recording of his experience running Overcooked 2. He also discussed the parallels between Overcooked and working together on an Agile team. Here’s some additional information on how you can use Overcooked with your teams:
Overcooked 2 for Team Building!
- Game wiki. It’s a “Cooperative Cooking Simulator”
- Link to the full video of David leading a group through playing: https://youtu.be/p1_S1RbDj30
- Please watch the video for mechanics of how you run the rounds
- Game cost: $25. Can be purchased almost anywhere (Xbox, Steam, Epic, Switch, etc)
- Players: up to 4. Ideally used for full teams.
- Can do virtually (as in the video), but most ideal when you can facilitate and just watch 4 people play on the same team in person
What it is used to teach:
- Why typical methods of control fail on teams (more details in instructions)
- How teams form a culture and adapt as they learn more
- The impact of self-organization on production vs command and control
- The value of helping each other out and understanding the big picture in order to better fill customer needs
Instructions:
- The goal is to get the most orders delivered as well as the highest score.
- Pick a level of medium complexity (end of world 1 to beginning world 3); depending on the team member’s familiarity with games you’ll want to bump difficulty up or down so it’s challenging but not frustrating.
- Run multiple rounds and record orders delivered and feedback from the players on what was enjoyable or not enjoyable
Round options
(don’t have to run them all, but pick ones that seem to be best for the team you’re working with):
- Practice round
- Just let everyone play to get used to controls and what they’ll see on screen.
- Usually do this for every time you run the workshop
- Leader control
- Put someone in charge to dictate what people can/should do. Do not let individuals be insubordinate by going against leader’s direction.
- Quality control
- Every order must be checked by one person before being delivered in order to make sure we’re having the highest quality work.
- Focus Round
- No one is allowed to talk. Talking distracts people from the most important part of work which is cranking out work. Stay in your lane and don’t interrupt others.
- Individual Production Reward
- Give everyone a job. Measure individuals performance and their goal is to produce as much as possible in their job regardless of the orders coming in. Praise individuals for doing the most work.
- Self Organizing
- Let the team figure everything out on their own
Each of these rounds tends to be things we see on teams as ways to handle uncertainty or challenges. Try them all or make up your own to see how self-organizing compares to everything else as far as most value delivered to the customer! You can also do things like measuring wasted products to teach about the LEAN wastes.Questions to Stoke Conversation within the team?
- How did that round feel?
- Did you help anyone else? Why or Why Not?
- What comparisons does this have to your team’s process?
- What ideas do you have for change?
Big thanks to David for sharing this fun game with us!