
Think with your hands: How to get started with Lego Serious Play (2013) - Tomte
http://de.slideshare.net/martinsandberg/lego-serious-play-intro
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jacobolus
I highly recommend anyone (from about age 8+) get some Zometool construction
toys, [http://zometool.com](http://zometool.com)
[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=zometool](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=zometool)

They’re super fun for modeling different kinds of geometrical shapes, and
useful professional tools for mathematicians, physicists, chemists,
architects, artists, ...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's hard to tell what they are from the website, they look like Knex but with
spherical connectors - that's not a bad thing at all, but is there more that
I'm not seeing easily?

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DanielBMarkham
My job: help teams run more like Google and less like the IRS. That means
lean, kanban, Agile, Scrum, XP, DevOps --whatever tool gets us from where we
are to where we want to go.

I became interested in this a couple of years ago, and I've had the privilege
since then of working with some LSP folks.

My initial thoughts are that I like this a lot as a way for strangers to get
to know one another. It seems really appropriate for team kickoffs, or in
cases where the team is a team -- but in name only. When it works, it's a
great way to get people to stop engineering the content of what they're saying
and just emotionally open up. The few times I participated, I was very
impressed with how quickly strangers came together as a working team.

So my position currently is "play with it a bit and see where it might work or
not". I don't see myself using this enough to get certified. I'm also not
seeing how it works with already norm'ed teams, but maybe I'm missing
something. Finally, like everything else in tech, there's a lot of hand-waving
and over-promising. The hype cycle doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It just
means you have to be careful about what's real and what's hype.

Fascinating line of thought, though.

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DKnoll
My thoughts:

1\. If you bring out LEGO while introducing yourself to a new team, you're
going to seem less down to earth and approachable and more like a children's
social worker.

2\. I feel that hiding serious topics behind infantile representations is only
going to jade your mature staff, and lead to a lack of trust as they would
feel patronised and discouraged from straight and open conversation.

3\. Not that I work in such an environment, but it seems like a lot of
startups go for a light and playful atmosphere but end up with a very forced
'have fun... or ELSE' culture in a failed attempt to Google themselves. I feel
the same failure often occurs with service industry companies trying to follow
the Disney management style.

Just my two cents. For the record ping pong tables and rubik's cubes rub me
the wrong way also.

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Pamar
Question: usually we create 2D models of sw: powerpoint, visio, a sketch on
the whiteboard.

Has anyone tried lego or some other 3D construction set? Did it work? Is there
anything particularly suitable to build "architecture"?

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drb311
It's a long time, but isn't this the software they build in the novel
Microserfs?

If so the idea's been around a long while, so I guess it just doesn't work in
real life.

It's a great geek novel anyway.

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Pamar
From what I remember the sw they were working on in the novel was more like a
Virtual Reality lego. I.e. something like what they use in Second Life, or
possibly Minecraft, but I don't remember it being aimed at modelling sw
architecture. Also, by using a 3D sw you would lose the physical manipulation
part, which seems to be important, according to the article linked above.

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gene-h
It is also worth mentioning that Lego makes a great mechanical prototyping
medium. A big advantage is being able to quickly iterate and demonstrate
something that works in the real world.

In simulation, it's easy to forget about things like friction*, deformation,
slop, backlash that aren't simulated.

That being said, it is high time that someone made a mechanical construction
set simulator for VR...

