Geoff and Paul, agile and leadership coaches, introduce a prioritisation technique Paul calls “Top Trumps prioritisation,” inspired by the card game where each card shares comparable attributes. Applied to product backlog items or user stories, the group first agrees 4–5 common value criteria (often aligned to product strategy or OKRs) that apply across all items, then scores each item against each criterion (e.g., out of 10) to reduce subjective debate. Scores can be agreed collaboratively, averaged from multiple stakeholders, and optionally weighted because criteria may not be equally important; the resulting total value score can be compared across backlog items and combined with estimates to consider ROI. They discuss running the exercise in workshops, anonymously, or online, and offer downloadable templates for listeners.

00:00 Sunny Welcome

00:26 Podcast Format

00:55 Top Trumps Prioritisation

01:47 How Top Trumps Works

03:49 From Game to Backlog

05:32 Pick Value Criteria

07:33 Score Stories and ROI

09:53 Weighting the Criteria

11:45 When to Use It

13:12 Templates and Download

14:13 Variations and Scaling

15:04 Wrap Up and Call to Action

Geoff and Paul discuss the “Wheel of Life,” a pizza-shaped self-assessment tool borrowed from life coaching that can be used with individuals or teams to visualise how different aspects of work or life are going. They explain setting context and psychological safety so it’s clearly for self-development, not performance management, then co-creating 6–10 segments, defining what 0 and 10 mean, and scoring subjectively. For teams, members score individually first to avoid bias, then compare results and focus on spreads rather than averages to surface differing perceptions. The coach prompts reflection on the shape, helps select one or two focus areas, and encourages small experiments to improve scores and revisit over time. They give an example team wheel (e.g., goals, collaboration, psychological safety, quality, stakeholder alignment) and a personal energy-level example, and mention downloadable templates and a request for listeners to share and rate the podcast.

Downloadable content here: www.inspectandadapt.com/podcasts/ep15-the-wheel-of-anything

01:17 Introducing Wheel of Life

02:28 How the Wheel Works

05:08 Safety and Confidentiality

06:13 Scoring and Reading the Shape

08:21 Team Use and Differences

11:29 Run Small Experiments

12:33 Team Health Example

17:23 From Two to Three Mindset

22:01 Templates and Wrap Up

22:17 Where to Find Us

22:51 Final Goodbye

Geoff and Paul discuss the long-running agile training exercise “The Ball Point Game,” often used in in-person Certified ScrumMaster courses to teach iterative improvement, inspect-and-adapt, and self-organisation. They explain the setup (typically 10–12 people and many tennis-ball-sized balls) and core rules: each ball must touch everyone, have airtime between people, not be passed to a closest neighbour, return to the starter, and dropped/removed balls incur a penalty while the team self-scores. The game is played over eight timed iterations with planning, running, scoring, and re-estimating, and teams usually improve after a chaotic first round. They highlight learning outcomes around experimentation, the dangers of targets and competition, facilitation/Scrum Master questioning, lean waste and flow, leadership dynamics, and contrasts with waterfall-style planning, and they plan to share a PDF of rules and invite listeners to submit scores or videos.

00:59 Podcast Intro Setup

01:25 Ball Point Origins

03:06 Game Rules Explained

06:18 Iterations Timing Format

10:09 Early Rounds Expectations

11:52 Experimentation Mindset

14:46 Targets Scores Psychology

18:00 Facilitation Prompts Tips

23:04 Variants Flow Competition

27:43 Wrap Up Resources Challenge

28:29 Final Goodbye