Learn Agile Development Through Tetris

Improving Agile Development
Through Tetris®
Mark Daggett

Copyright © 2011 Mark Daggett. Some Rights Reserved

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Can learning Tetris improve the
quality of your software
development process?

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You know Tetris

Photo Credit: fraskedesigns.blogspot.com 3


Tetris is Crack for the OCD

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Tetris Is Serious; Seriously
Developed by Alexey Pajitnov to test
artiﬁcial intelligence algorithms
Can be used to measure conceptual skills
of task analysis and resource management
in players
Can also measure a player’s visceral
decision making process under pressure

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Agile Development Reasoning
Greater awareness of development costs
[resource management]
Tighter integration between developers
and stakeholders [task analysis]
Ability to quickly change course on
projects [response to pressure]

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1. Don’t Get Too Clever

Tetris rewards players for clearing
more than one row at a time.
This creates a chain of serial
dependencies that need to happen
in the right order to succeed.
Serial dependencies cost your
project time and resources as you
wait for the right piece to arrive.

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Serial dependencies can easily turn
into a FAIL as other resources, such
as time, run out.

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Your chances of success are greatly
increased when you work towards
solutions that can be completed in
many different ways.

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2. Stay Low
As your stack of uncleared rows
increases, your time to make
decisions decreases. This means you
are more likely to make a poor
decision in the future.
The more time you give yourself the
more likely your future steps will be
well-reasoned
In Tetris and in development cycles
if you are forced to just react to
impending deadlines you drastically
reduce your ability to succeed.

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3. Maximize the Work You Are Not
Doing
Tetris pieces can be rotated clockwise and counterclockwise.
Efﬁciency is knowing the fastest direction to rotate the piece
to ﬁt your stack.
Rotating Left Desired Orientation Rotating Right

3x as long to rotate

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3. Maximize the Work You Are Not
Doing

Many agile teams take pride in the amount of automation
they bring to their development process, through testing,
deploying or documenting.
Any process that can be done a faster way (without
sacriﬁcing quality) should be.
Developers need to know the strengths and weaknesses
of their technology stack.

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4. Know Your Goal

In Tetris it is easy to focus on your score, as a
measurement for progress but that’s a red herring.
Tetris by design is a game that doesn’t end so you can’t
“win”.
You don’t win your application by deploying it - you just
clear your stack

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5. Fix Mistakes NOW!
A common problem in Tetris among
players is to try to bury their
mistakes
Ignoring mistakes means players
have less space remaining to work
with, and therefore a higher
likelihood of making similar mistakes
in the future.
Agile development focuses on
refactoring code, getting rid of
duplication, baroqueness and silos
of code.
A.B.R. (Always Be Refactoring)
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6. Fail Early And Often
Tetris is to agile
development as
“PITFALL!” is to the
Waterfall method.

Ironic Name I Know
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START OVER HERE

DIE HERE
Level map of PITFALL! 16


“Pitfall!” requires you to start back at the beginning of the
level each time you die. This is like the waterfall method,
which reboots the development cycle for every
requirement change.

Tetris lets you fail quickly and let you restart where you left
off. You can improve your technique and understanding of
the game at any point of the play cycle.

Agile development focuses on test driven development,
and writing tests to fail ﬁrst. This ensures that you work
directly on the feature in question and not any of the
ancillary systems.

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7. Embrace Change

In Tetris the player only knows which piece is coming
next.
Agile development says the developer should embrace
change, be it shifting requirements, or deadlines.
Just as the player is constantly scanning the game board
the agile developer should be reevaluating previous
design decisions looking for ways to refactor code and
reduce complexity.

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8. There’s an “I” in Tetris but not Team

Tetris is a single player unless you are competing against
another player.
This is unlike programming, which at some fundamental
level is a process of building off the work of others.
The Tetris metaphor works only so far. The biggest factor
in success or failure in an agile environment is how the
team works together.

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THANKS!
Mark Daggett
Application Architect
Humansized Inc.

@heavysixer
mark@humansized.com
http://www.humansized.com

Tetris ® is a registered trademark of The Tetris Company
PITFALL! ® is a registered trademark of Activision
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Learn Agile Development Through Tetris

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