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DetectiveGame Description

The document describes a deductive tabletop game to teach Earned Value Management concepts. The game has students analyze project documentation from a hypothetical failed software project to calculate variances and performance indexes. By identifying schedule and cost overruns, students work to determine what caused the project to fail. The game is intended for project management courses and takes around 90 minutes to play in groups of 4 students.

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198 views3 pages

DetectiveGame Description

The document describes a deductive tabletop game to teach Earned Value Management concepts. The game has students analyze project documentation from a hypothetical failed software project to calculate variances and performance indexes. By identifying schedule and cost overruns, students work to determine what caused the project to fail. The game is intended for project management courses and takes around 90 minutes to play in groups of 4 students.

Uploaded by

freekybaby007
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CATARINA

Department of Informatics and Statistics

Bruno Rausis, Gustavo Soares, Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, PMP

Detective Game what killed the project?


Purpose
The purpose of the deductive tabletop game is to apply Earned Value Management (EVM) for
the monitoring and control of a software project as part of teaching project management.
Goals and objectives
Goal
On the cognitive level, the learning objective of the game is to reinforce EVM concepts and to
teach the competency to apply basic EVM calculations covering the cognitive levels
remembering, understanding and application in accordance to the revised version of Blooms
taxonomy of educational objectives (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001).
Objectives
After the game session, participants will be able to calculate and interpret variances and
performance indexes (Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI)) to
monitor project progress as part of Earned Value Management.
Primary target audience
The activity is intended to be used as part of project management courses (either as part of a
university course or professional training) targeted to teach project management professionals
and students. A pre-requisite for the application of the game is that the participants have a basic
understanding of project management and earned value management taught, e.g., through
lectures.
Group size
The game should ideally played with several groups, each composed of about 4 participants.
Duration
Phase

Duration

Explanation of the activity and


distribution of material

10 min

Analysis of the project materials

60 min

Debriefing and identification of winner

20 min

TOTAL

90 min

Physical setting
Room size depends on the number of groups providing sufficient space for each group for
playing the game. At least one large table (or several small ones used together) should be
available for each group.
Materials and equipment
Slides for the explanation of the game

Project folder containing: Company brochure, Pizzeria brochure, Project charter, project plan,
status reports (week 1 week 4), payroll, contraction letter, customer complaint letter, answer
sheet, tips sheet
Solution sheets

Process
The game takes place in the context of a hypothetical software company, SoftSolution that
finished a software project for the development of a pizza ordering web site for Tio Chicos
pizzeria. The project failed and now the company is contracting the players as consultants in
order to identify what went wrong. Therefore the players receive a set of project documents
including, e.g. the project charter, project plan and the status reports of all 4 weeks of the
project duration.
The players then have to analyze the project documentation and revise its monitoring and
control. Therefore, the students have to complete the calculations of schedule and cost
variances as well as the performance indexes for week 3 and 4 of the project. In addition, based
on EVM the students have to indicate for each week of the project, if there has been a schedule
and/or cost overrun as well as try to identify the possible causes.
For each correct calculation and correctly identified overrun, the groups receive a point. The
winner is the group of players obtained the largest number of points.
Once finished the analysis phase, the results are presented by the instructor and questions of
the students are discussed.

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, PMP

CreativeCommons2011

Figure 1. Students of a Project Management Course of the Information Systems Undergraduate Course at the
UFSC - Federal University of Santa Catarina/2011.

Debriefing main points


Debriefing is directed to reflect on the usage of EVM to track the progress of the project,
including discussion questions, such as: What do the performance indices reveal? How did your
project perform regarding the performance indices? Why did this happen (e.g., why did you did
the execution take longer than planned?) as well as demonstrating its importance.
In a second part of the debriefing, the objective is to briefly reflect on the activity as a learning
opportunity, discussing questions, such as: What did you learn through this activity? How can
you apply this in your daily work?
Full contact information:
Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim
[email protected]
Department of Informatics and Statistics - INE
Federal University of Santa Catarina - UFSC
88049-200 Florianpolis - SC
Brazil
References
Anderson LW, Krathwohl DR (eds) (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of
bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman, New York

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim, PMP

CreativeCommons2011

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