Games Project Teams Play
April 20th, 2005 by HalA project team has a chance to succeed when team members feel free to fully express how they are doing, what help they need, and what help they can offer. Unfortunately, all too often project teams are engaged in another practice. Johanna Rothman, author of Managing Product Development, calls it Schedule Game #1: Schedule Chicken. Johanna describes the game this way:
(E)veryone claims they're on time. But the reality is that each person is waiting for another person to explain why he or she is not ready. In that case, each person graciously says, "Oh, that's fine with me if you take an extra week or two or three. No problem."
Johanna explains how it's possible to play the game:
Schedule Chicken occurs when PMs only measure the milestones (the date), and not the stuff that's created (the feature set) and the progress towards creating that stuff (velocity) and how good that stuff is (the defect levels) all throughout the project.
Based on Johanna's posting title I'm guessing she'll be treating us to a series on schedule games teams play. Let's help her out. What games have you seen team members playing?
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April 21st, 2005 at 10:16 am
Hal,
Schedule Chicken is an old game that is still played every day on projects. David wrote about it in early 1997 here: http://www.projectcommunity.com/archive/V1N2so.pdf
Amy
April 25th, 2005 at 8:41 am
Another favorite game is Name that package where each developer /developer battle to overcommit in building products
Similar to the game EGO, but played at an industrial strenght level.
Extra points are given to the developer/team that dazzles the product owner into to dismissing the advice and counsel of the PM, but then agrees to hold the PM to the winner’s(?) claim.
This is not be confused with the Hall of Shame game of NMP. NMP is a classic interface game where an interface specification is agreed to and signed off on and then, after more than a year of workd, weeks before release one ore more participants cannot pass the acceptance test. The response is “Not My Problem” (NMP), we decided to build our methods this way and this is the way it is - change the spec.