So, our current Iteration Manager, John McFadyen, got us to try the Marshmallow Challenge in a team building session.
The challenge is basically how high can you build a self standing tower of spaghetti which is capable of supporting the weight of a marshmallow. Further information can be found here :
http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Welcome.html
Before the session began, the ice was broken with people discussing the contents of the envelopes & what they might be required for.
Eventually we all settled down into our individual teams, the instructions read out to us and the 18 minutes build time commenced.
It was interesting to see the different approaches, and funnily enough there wasn’t really any cheating going on as each time thought they had the best idea.
It turns out we pretty much all went for the pyramid / teepee style, and only 1 team managed to get higher than 1 length of spaghetti. A poor effort!
The following discussions proved very insightful and when the challenge was applied to software development it was interesting to see where we could apply the newly acquired knowledge.
FYI - the tower which stood the tallest used the idea of prototyping.