Description

The XP Game is a playful way to familiarize the players with some of the more difficult concepts of the XP Planning Game, like velocity, story estimation, yesterday’s weather and the cycle of life. Anyone can participate. The goal is to make development and business people work together in 1 team. Both will have the experience of performing the other role. It’s especially useful when a company starts adopting XP.

Outline

In real life Planning Game, development and business people are sitting on opposite sides of the table. Both participate, but in different roles. The XP Game makes the players switch between developer and customer roles, so that they understand each other’s behaviour very well.

Some of the concepts in the Planning Game are difficult to grasp, for developers and for customers. This XP Game is a practical way to demonstrate how the rules of the XP Planning Game make up an environment in which it becomes possible to make predictable plans. After all, the easiest way to get a feeling for the way it works is to experience it.

It differs from the classical Mousetrap or Coffeemaker Game in several ways:

  • The developers and the customers are not separated. Everybody get to play the developer and customer role.
  • The stories are really very simply, everybody will understand them,
  • but they’re also very concrete.
  • We do a real implementation, with real, unambiguous acceptance tests,
  • but not a bit technical!!! (I guess everybody can inflate a balloon…)
  • There’s a small element of competition in it that makes it a really fun game to play.

Addressed concepts: velocity, planning game, estimation, and how to explain these concepts in a clear way to all participants in the XP process.

Detailed description