Goal: To improve participants’ ability to see how the organization of a room facilitates or hinders communication.
Time: 30-60 minutes.
Participants: Eight to forty; can be adapted for smaller or larger groups.
Introduction:
In Extreme Programming, or any other activity by more than one person, the physical structure where people are found affects how they work together. XP regards communication as a key value, and has a couple practices directly focused on it: Sit Together (also known as On-Site Customer) and Pair Programming.
Yogi Berra said, "You can see a lot by observing," and that’s the purpose of this game: to provide a framework for viewing team rooms, thinking about what they say about communication, and thinking about how to improve them.
Supplies:
For each group of eight participants:
- Four envelopes
- Four pictures of team rooms, one attached to the back of each envelope. (These can be either pictures of real rooms, or floor plans.)
- Response cards: twelve index cards
For the facilitator:
- Timer
- Whistle
Flow of the Game:
| 1. Introductory Briefing | Briefly review why communication is important. Explain that they’ll be asked to analyze rooms for how well they support communication within a team. There will be three analysis rounds and an evaluation round. Evaluation will assess overall insight, so quantity and depth of insight are both valued. |
| 2. Organize the Participants | Divide the participants into groups of eight, seated around a table. At each table, ask people to work as four pairs. (If necessary, some "pairs" can be trios or solos.) Give each pair one envelope (with a picture on the back) and three index cards. |
| 3. Conduct Analysis Rounds | Each pair gets three minutes to look at the picture on the envelope they received, do some quick analysis, and write down their insights on a blank index card. At the end of the time limit, blow the whistle. Have each pair puts its card in the envelope (unsealed!), and pass it to the pair to their left. (No peeking at a previous pair’s answers.) Repeat twice more (three rounds total). |
| 4. Conduct an Evaluation Round | (Each pair should now be holding an envelope containing three index cards, none of which they wrote.) Have each pair rate its cards, based on the quality of insight about the pictured room. The pair should divide 100 points among the three cards, writing the score on each. Allow three to five minutes for this analysis. |
| 5. Present the Results | Let each pair present the picture and the response cards, from least to most insightful. After reading the cards, the pair should describe how it decided to distribute the points. |
| 6. Determine the Winner | Let each pair collect its cards and add up its score. The pair with the most points wins. |
| 7. Debrief the Participants | Note aspects of the room that most pairs caught, and that most pairs didn’t catch. Highlight any unique analysis methods used. Discuss ways to change rooms to improve interaction. Encourage people to apply this analysis to their own team room, and to other rooms they enter where people work together. |
Variations:
- Let each pair look at more rooms. (This will require more prepared envelopes and index cards.)
- Let pairs have systematic procedures they apply. (For example, put tracing paper over the picture, and draw heavy lines between pairs, and a circle around all programmers and another around customers.
- Drop the scoring component.
[FLOOR PLAN (August 30, 2003) is by Bill Wake, William.Wake@acm.org, http://www.xp123.com. This game is based on the ENVELOPES framegame, copyright (c) 2003, Workshops by Thiagi, Inc. For more information, contact thiagi@thiagi.com.]