Innovation Games® - Buy a Feature

From AgileOpenNorthwest

Innovation Games® - "Buy a Feature"

Brent Barton and Chris Sterling hosted a session to run "Buy a Feature" from the Innovation Games® book. The idea of this session was to introduce participants to playing serious games to solve real business problems. This game can also be played online at Innovation Games® web site.

Image:InnovationGames-Invitation.jpg

The session started off with about 25 people who came to participate. We handed out sheets that describe all of the Innovation Games® from the book and a small chart showing the context that suits each game (thank you to Luke Hohmann for allowing us to share these handouts).

We then ran 3 games of "Buy a Feature" with groups of around 8 people each. The groups had the following makeup:

• 5 Players
• 1 Banker
• 2-3 Observers

A case study for a product along with a list of features and their prices was handed out to each group member. The Players were given an equal share of $320 in play money from the Banker that they could use to purchase features they wanted from the list. They were not able to modify the list of features nor the cost of each feature for this game. The total cost of the features was around $530. We gave the groups about 60% of the total cost of features so that the game would not run too long in a time constrained session. It is more common to constrain the money more for actual Buy a Feature games in our experience.

Observers were asked to write down anything observations they had about the game as it was being played. They were not to interact with the Players while the game was being played. We also gave them a few ideas about what they might look for in their observations:

• Watch
• Look for interesting things
• Who interacts with who
• What kind of interactions are occurring
• Order of purchases
• Timing of purchases
• One observation per index card

Here are some photos from the game play.

Image:BuyAFeature-1.jpgImage:BuyAFeature-2.jpgImage:BuyAFeature-3.jpgImage:BuyAFeature-4.jpgImage:BuyAFeature-Purchases.jpgImage:BuyAFeature-ObserversReportFindings.jpg

After the games were played, the Observers stuck their observation cards up on the wall and described them to the rest of the group. During this process they also looked for ways to affinity group observations that were similar.

Image:BuyAFeature-Observations.jpg

Once the observations were all placed on the wall and discussed we all debriefed the games and had a questions and answer discussion. For those who participated, thank you for allowing us to take pictures and use them to show the games online. In a real game there would be someone who is capturing the event using a camera.

Go back to Agile_Open_Northwest_2010_Session_Notes.