TheScopingGame

From SPA Wiki

We started the session with nine participants, none of whom were visibly suffering from the previous evening's 'champagne' or whisky sessions.

Nine was a good number as the game is best played in teams of three. I opened with a few slides on Scoping and Software Product Lines then we plunged into Round 1 of the game.

In the Scoping Game each team had to decide which (of three) products their company would build and which features they would include in those products. Players also have to decide which features to make reusable and which to make application-specific. They have some added information in the form of market predictions of which features would be popular in the coming year and these can be used to help decide which features to make reusable and which to make application-specific.

In the variant of the game I ran at SPLC 2006 1 I'd begun the game with players each having individual pots of money and individual goals to maximize revenue for their product in addition to a group goal of maximizing revenue across the team as a whole. This leads to more tension and harder negotiation between the players but I felt that we didn't have enough time in the SPA 2007 session to deal with this extra (realistic) complexity so we began with each team collaborating from the start.

Each team started with a collective pot of $45 million and the results of round 1 were:

  iCaramba   - Revenue 27, Expenditure 45
  Twitters   - Revenue 24, Expenditure 44
  Team N*kia - Revenue 23, Expenditure 45

Team N*okia lost $5 million on the floor but we gave them 1 minute to find it and spend it. This probably wouldn't happen in a real Product Line scoping exercise.

Twitters had an extra $1 million that they could have spent and this could have brought them level with iCaramba had they noticed it.

Interestingly none of the teams developed the 'Starter Phone' product. In a real Product Line Scoping exercise there would probably be a product manager arguing that the Starter Phone should be part of the Product Line. This leads to interesting discussions and decisions about what to include and exclude from the Product Line.

Photos of the session are available at my blog - 'The Variation Point' 2

The next (and final) round considered a rescoping exercise where three new product candidates were being considered. Each team received new revenue based on their performance in Round 1.

  iCaramba   - Total Revenue 118, Total Expenditure 72
  Team N*kia - Total Revenue 105, Total Expenditure 68
  Twitters   - Total Revenue 100, Total Expenditure 68

So iCaramba's Round 1 lead proved unassailable and they were duly declared winners.

We concluded with some closing discussion about the process used to decide Scope and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and took something away from the game.

Tony Hoare also joined the session part way through and seemed quite interested in the workings and progress of the game. (Photo at 2)

Afterwards James Robertson had some nice things to say about the session 3.

I can run this type of session as a tailored service so get in touch if you're interested or want to find out more. 4