Team Building Activity

Team Building Activity

Marshmallow Challenge

Designing Thinking requires group of people to work together as a team and each team member is expected to make equal contribution. Therefore assigning specific roles and responsibilities to each team member and who should lead the team needs to be specified clearly.

Marshmallow challenge as a team building activity brings creative frame of mind and encourages innovation ideas in organization.

When to use Marshmallow Challenge

• When team members are new to each other
• To be prepare the team for the ideation phase

How to conduct Marshmallow Challenge exercise 

1. Divide the team with four members each.

2. Provide the challenge materials (20 sticks of spaghetti, 1 meter of string,1 Marshmallow and 1 meter of masking tape)

3. Give the challenge “to build the tallest standing structure with marshmallow to be placed on the top of the structure within 18 minutes”.

4. The following instructions are to be provided clearly:

• The team may use all 20 spaghetti or less and may even break it if required
• As much or less of the masking tape and string may be used.
• Eating the marshmallow shall disqualify the team.
• Measurement shall be taken from table surface to top of marshmallow

5. Start the challenge

6. After the measurement, the winning team to be declared 

7. Conduct debrief through team reflection as to what was learnt, what role each team member played and how to improve the team performance.

Retrieved from: Design Thinking