Back in 2017 I staffed up and hired a team to help me do my consulting work. I was optimistic that I could train a bunch of young excitable devs to help me fight server fires. I, myself, am not the most linear learner. Meaning if given the choice between reading a book on a topic or being handed a problem to solve and then figuring out how to solve it I do best with the ladder.

I wanted to create a way where the devs I was training could be given a problem to solve and then watch them talk out the process of how to solve that problem. I ended up creating what I called “Scrum Master” which was a simple board game. I wrote down a hundred or so problems I had encountered over the years on cards. I then select one of the cards to be the game scenario. Once we had selected a scenario, on a whiteboard, I would diagram out what the infrastructure would look like in the form of a network map. Then we were ready to start.

I would play the role of the “Scrum Master” and the devs would play the role of devs trying to solve an outage in our system. It was designed after Dungeons and Dragons in the way that you would describe to the “Scrum Master” what actions you wanted to take and then they would describe back to you the result of said actions. So they would take turns telling me things like “I log into the bastion and check the logs on the XYZ server” or “I check the AWS Security Groups to see what has access to XYZ” and then I would tell them if there was anything of significance.

Most of the time they would figure out what the problem was and then ideally present a solution to the problem. It was a fun way to exercise their problem solving skills in a low stress environment. As fate would have it the game actually turned out to be a good sales tool as well. Since I am building an online diagramming tool I am tempted to build a feature where you can play Scrum Master online using my tool. Could be fun.

Do you have a creative way of training your team's problem solving skills? I would love to hear about it!

~Cheers

PS: If you are interested in engaging my services as a Web Application Architect check out my Group Coaching Program or 1 on 1 Consulting at schematical.com and check out my FREE eBook 20 Things You Can DoTo Save Money On Your Amazon Web Services Bill Today