The Scaling Ball Game
The Scaling Ball Game
experience scaling issues by playing
About the Book
Everyone and their mother talks about scaling.
Yet most have never really experienced scaling. The scaling ball game, let people experience scaling. No theory, real practising how scaling feels. And it allows you to experiment with solutions in a safe environment.
This book will also teach you how to play different version of the ballpoint game.From the original, over a one ball version to a scaled version for more than 100 people.
Reader Testimonials

Peter Latten
Agile Coach
Do you want to know upfront what is going to happen with your Distributed Scrum Teams? The Ball Point Game is one of the better games to play. During my last experience with Yves I was surprised that even I stepped into the old mistake; out of sight out of mind. What a simple physical whiteboard can do when you put it between two Ball point teams is amazing.

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse
agile consultant
Who has attended a Scrum training, probably has played the ball-point game. The 'scaling' ball point game takes the same game to a higher level: You experience the pains of growing teams and working with multiple teams: trying to optimise the flow as a whole. The scaling ball-point game probably should become de facto part of a 'scaling' agile course.

Inge Gorgon
Agile coach
The ball point game of Boris Glover has been a classic in agile trainings for a while. Yves and Markus add new dimensions to it, not only by scaling it up to different teams, but also by introducing middlemen, bugs, obstacles that simulate districbuted working, …. The result is a fun and instructive game that gives participants the opportunity to experience the problems scaling causes and time to reflect on how to get flow in such situations. A must for agile teams in large environments.

Jan De Baere
agile coach
Being through a couple of large scale initiatives I was curious to see what the game had to offer. It turns out the game visualises a lot. The situations are very recognisable and the outcome is comparable to real life scalability issues. The Scaling Ballgame is a good game to experience when you are about to start an – even limited - scaled initiative.
Table of Contents
- Recommendations
- Foreword
-
tl;dr
- Description
- Expected benefits of participating
- What did the session creators hope to learn?
-
Trainer instructions
- How to make your life easier
- Tips for first time presenters
-
Ball games
- The Ball point game
- The One Ball Point Game
- The Kanban Ball point game
- The DevOps Ball point game
- Virtual Magic Ball Game Simulation
- How to play without Balls at hand
-
How to run the Scaling Ballgame
- Round 1 [1 team] :
- Round 2: [2 team’s] :
- Round 3:
- Round 4:
- Group retro:
- The Scaling Ball Game in smaller groups
- The Scaling Ball Game in mid-sized groups
- Things learned
-
Debriefing
- How did it feel?
- Questions you could use to gain more insights:
- Questions on swapping team members:
- Other questions
- Observation
- Feedback
-
Conference Submission
- Abstract
- Library
- Supplies
- Networking
- Acknowledgments
- About the authors
-
Game Feedback
- Steps
- Commitments
- Notes
- History
- Countries
-
Appendix
- More on the DevOps ball game
- License
Other books by these authors
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$11,812,115writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
Stratospheric
Tom Hombergs, Björn Wilmsmann, and Philip RiecksFrom Zero to Production with Spring Boot and AWS. All you need to know to get a Spring Boot application into production with AWS. No previous AWS knowledge required.
Go to stratospheric.dev for a tour of the contents.
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
Jetpack Compose internals
Jorge CastilloJetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. Master how it works internally and become a more efficient developer with it. You'll also find it valuable if you are not an Android dev. This book provides all the details to understand how the Compose compiler & runtime work, and how to create a client library using them.
Advanced Web Application Architecture
Matthias NobackThe missing manual for making your web applications future-proof
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
Maîtriser Apache JMeter
Philippe Mouawad, Bruno Demion (Milamber), and Antonio Gomes RodriguesToute la puissance d'Apache JMeter expliquée par ses commiteurs et utilisateurs experts. De l'intégration continue en passant par le Cloud, vous découvrirez comment intégrer JMeter à vos processus "Agile" et Devops.
If you're looking for the newer english version of this book, go to Master JMeter : From load testing to DevOps
Aprendiendo Git
Miguel Angel Durán GarcíaGit no es complicado... ¡Si lo entiendes! 😜
¿Sientes que sabes usarlo porque has memorizado todos los comandos que necesitas? ¡Pero no entiendes qué hace cada cosa y por qué! Así es normal que, cuando exista un problema, te cueste resolverlo.
¡Con este libro vas a entender de una vez por todas todo lo que es Git y cómo sacarle provecho!
D3 Start to Finish
Peter CookD3 Start to Finish shows you how to build a custom, interactive and beautiful data visualisation using the JavaScript library D3.js (versions 6 & 7).
The book covers D3.js concepts such as selections, joins, requests, scale functions, events & transitions. You'll put these concepts into practice by building a custom, interactive data visualisation.
R Programming for Data Science
Roger D. PengThis book brings the fundamentals of R programming to you, using the same material developed as part of the industry-leading Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization. The skills taught in this book will lay the foundation for you to begin your journey learning data science. Printed copies of this book are available through Lulu.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #4
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #6
Retromat eBook Bundle for Agile Retrospectives
2 Books
If you facilitate retrospectives this bundle is for you: "Plans for Retrospectives" helps beginners learn the lay of the land with tried-and-true plans. Once you know your way around, "Run great agile retrospectives" contains all 135+ activities in Retromat for you to mix and match. - #7
Static Analysis and Automated Refactoring
2 Books
As PHP developers we are living in the "Age of Static Analysis". We can use a tool like PHPStan to learn about potential bugs before we ship our code to production, and we can enforce our team's programming standards using custom PHPStan rules. Recipes for Decoupling by Matthias Noback teaches you in great detail how to do this, while also... - #9
Practical FP in Scala + Functional event-driven architecture
2 Books
Practical FP in Scala (A hands-on approach) & Functional event-driven architecture, aka FEDA, (Powered by Scala 3), together as a bundle! The content of PFP in Scala is a requirement to understand FEDA so why not take advantage of this bundle!?