What Were They Thinking

Timing: 30 mins

Ingredients:

* Supplies for each team: play dough, pipe cleaners (chenille stems)

Directions:

Each team selects one Business Analyst (or Product Owner) to come to the front of the class to look at a picture of an item that the customer wants built. The BA’s are instructed to only use imperatives and metaphors (no ‘rhymes with’) and to not use certain words when describing the item to the rest of their team.

* In round 1, the item is something simple (such as a chair), but the BA must communicate only in writing. This should only take a few minutes for the team to create using the given supplies.

* In round 2, the item is something simple (a teapot), but the BA can speak with their team. This should show how much easier it is to communicate by speaking.

* In round 3, the BA is shown an item that isn’t as easy to communicate (a motor-cycle RV or a make-up kit built in to a computer mouse for instance). Since items like these are not common, it should be much harder to build.

Note: A quicker alternative to this game is to have teams draw the items instead of using the supplies.

Learning Points:

* In software, we are rarely creating something that already exists. So we are forced to communicate in imperatives and metaphors and, quite often, much is lost in translation.