Presentation from the 23rd Australasian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC), April 2014, Sydney, Australia.

1. Creating game-like activities in
agile software engineering
education
Associate Professor David Parsons
Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
23rd Australasian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC)
April 2014, Sydney, Australia

2. What is a game?
• What is ‘gamification’?
– Rules
– Goals
– Players (individual or team)
– Artifacts (physical or virtual)
– Entertainment
– Competition (cooperation in team games)

3. Game-Like Activities in Agile SE
1. Game-like aspects within methods
– CRC cards, planning game, planning
poker
2. Game-like coding for software
craftsmanship
– Code katas, coding dojos, coderetreats
3. Games to teach agile aspects
– XP game, Lego games, Agile hour

4. Game Creation for Learning
• Game-like activities can help teach
agile software engineering
• Emulate real world software projects
• Higher level skills are better developed
by creative actions
• Creating an agile game is a challenging
and insightful process that can benefit
the learner in many ways

5. Class Assignment
• Post grad course in agile SE
• Played the XP Game and the Agile
Technique Hour
• Then asked to create and demonstrate
their own agile games
• Had to address only one aspect of
agile methods

6. • Provided as part of the assessment
requirements
“
A Definition of ‘game-like’
“To be ‘game-like’, an activity should be fun
to do, include some level of competition
(individual or team) have clear goals and
some way of checking if those goals have
been reached”

7. Task Challenges
• Creativity and reflection
– Easy to think up game-like activities
– Harder to use these to help others learn
about agile methods
• Planning
– Many ideas too hard to implement in
practice
– Not just a theoretical exercise - had to
create a viable product

8. Agile Skills
• The assignment addressed skills
essential to agile practice:
– Planning
– Testing
– Iterative development
– Meeting stakeholder requirements
– ‘doing the simplest thing that could
possibly work’

9. Four ‘Successful’ Games
• Realistic to deliver in class
• Focused on a single aspect of agile
development
1. pair programming
2. stand up meetings
3. team strategy
4. refactoring
• Gained positive feedback from players

10. Assembling Pens
• Re-assembling pens in pairs
– pairing is claimed to have more value on
tasks that are not well understood at the
beginning
• Relative roles of driver and navigator
• Additional rules such as silent pairing

11. Assembling Pens Materials

12. Scrumhancer
• Explores stand up meetings
• Specific problem solving tasks to do
• Each developer reports, team members
decide strategy for the next cycle
• Assessed whether meetings were
correctly time constrained, focused
and constructive

13. Observation Score Sheet
Questions Yes No N/A
Did the standup meeting start on time?
Did the standup meeting end on time (i.e. after one
minute)?
Were all three developers and the Scrum master on time
for the meeting?
Did all developers actively participate in the meeting?
Could all participants make their points clear?
Was there any irrelevant topic proposed by anyone during
the meeting?
Did everybody in the team stand during the meeting?
Was the Scrum master able to maintain the meeting
decorum? (e.g. did the scrum master ask developers to
move on if an irrelevant topic was brought up?)

14. Agile Poker
• The value of working in pairs and
teams (collaborative strategy)
• Make a poker hand by adding 4 cards
(1 card each) to the first card drawn by
the game controller
• Members work individually, then in
silent pairs, then as a team

15. Scoring Example
Game
Controller’s
drawn card
Team 1 Team 2
Straight Flush (1 Point) Full House (1 Point)
Win (1 Point) Lose (0 Point)

16. An Agile Story
• Changing requirements and refactoring
• Stories based on supplied characters,
actions, and locations
• New characters, actions and locations
are added in iterations
• Story must be refactored while
maintaining design quality

17. Story Components

18. Summary of 4 Agile Games
Agile Game Game Features
Learning focus Materials Goals Goal checking
Assembling
Pens
Pair
programming
Pens
Cooperate to
assemble
components
Functional
testing
Scrumhancer
Standup
meetings
Puzzles
Gain value from
meetings
Observer
scorecard
Agile Poker Team strategy Playing cards
Learn to develop
team strategy
Poker scoring
Agile Story Refactoring ‘Story’ cards *
Maintain quality
while embracing
change
‘Customer’ as
judge
* Not the same as the ‘story cards’ often used in agile development

19. Summary
• A broad assessment canvas,
encompassing:
– Analytical skills, identifying core agile
concepts
– Creative thinking skills in design
– Organizational skills running games
– Reflection and peer review

20. Acknowledgement
• The author thanks the Agile Software
Engineering students whose work is
referenced in this presentation:
– Gautam Atmakuri
– Mridu Gupta
– Dylan McLeod
– Agus Leonardi Sugianto