Corporate Serious Games Are Changing The Rules Of Product Development

Corporate Serious Games Are Changing The Rules Of Product Development
Tom Grant, Ph. D.Senior Analyst, Forrester Research

Agenda

What software development can tell us about product development
Software development is innovation with most of the pesky physical laws removed.

Dad, why do people hate your software?

Complexity is one big problem

Some hot topics in software development
Agile
Iterative, adaptive development
Lean
Pull model, emphasis on flow
Requirements
Improve the lexicon of development
User experience (UX)
Connecting code to humans
DevOps
Code developed is not code deployed
Technical debt
Sloppy code accumulates, slows innovation
Social media
Conversations go both ways
Cloud
More direct relationship, utility model
Embedded software
Creating hybrid hardware/software products
All of these reflect, in different ways, the problems dealing with complexity.

Software companies don’t handle complexity well
The Chevrolet Volt
Brand new automobile technologyMillions of lines of code
Time to develop: 3 years
Oracle Database
Mature technologyMillions of lines of code
Time between versions 8 and 9: 4 years
Windows OS
Mature technologyMillions of lines of code
Time between XP and Vista: 5 years

Complexity divides technology producers & consumers
Base: 105 professionals directly involved with the development or support of software applications
Source: Q1 2011 Global Application Development & Delivery Organization Structure Online Survey

To get out of this jungle of complexity, you’ll need more than just a bigger machete or a larger expedition.

Lack of customer insight is another problem

Ever pay $100K for something you didn’t use?

Developers build software for people unlike them

We don’t question our assumptions about customers

“Team dynamics” are the third problem
Compartmentalization
Overbearingpersonalities
Poor morale

TIME TOCHANGETHERULES

What sort of serious games?
Structured, game-like activities with collective outcomes

Different needs, different games
Source: April 29, 2011, “App Dev Teams: Consider Playing Around With Serious Games” Forrester report

Teams often use serious gaming regularly for:
Ideation
Requirements collection
Requirements validation
Rapid decision-making
Strategic-level decisions (portfolio, road map, etc.)
Retrospection

Where serious games figure into development
Generate new insights into what customers really value
Change team dynamics and challenge operating assumptions
CONCEIVE
TEST
BUILD
DELIVER
ADOPT
ASSESS
Reduce complexity throughout the innovation process

EXAMPLE: Product box

EXAMPLE: Buy a feature
COST
FEATURE
SPENT
-
Android app for activity management
$5,000
$500
Custom pipeline stages
$2,000
-
More complex lead-scoring options
$3,500
$300
More canned reports
$1,500
$2,000
Define and manage teams
$4,750
$2,500
Easy clean-up of bad or duplicate data
$2,500
-
Activity entry via email
$3,250
-
Associate teams with prospects
$1,250

EXAMPLE: Prune the product tree
Sales MGR
Sales Rep
Emailactivity
Report API
Mobilesupport
Pipelinemgt
Teams
Opportunitystates

Serious games are useful in many contexts

Agenda

Why do serious games work?
Structured
Rules, but often no winners
Purposeful
Definite outcome
Time-bound
By definition, a time-boxed exercise
Participatory
Success depends on everyone participating.
Egalitarian
Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate.
All of which can simplify decision-making and generate new insights.

IF figure out puzzle THEN release pleasure- creating chemicals (opioids)
Our brains are wired for intrinsic motivation.

Reducing complexity
Rewriting a decade-old system from scratch
Needed to economize on features included in the first version
Used a Product Box game to ask stakeholders what was most important
Some surprises in the results
Communicated the results throughout the company
OUR PRODUCT
Now with more stuff!

Improving customer insights
Looking for fresh ideas for support projects
Have to overcome geographic and organizational boundaries to find them
Ran “Buy A Feature” online
Allowed broad participation
Recorded conversations
Had high engagement, including after work
Gave workers outside HQ a sense of real participation

Challenging team dynamics
At end of sprint (development cycle), use a serious game to ask what they could do differently the next time
EX: Prune the product tree
Off-cycle, use serious games to generate ideas
Collaborate with Bangalore team
“Ask powerful questions”
Collaborate over distances
Collaborate across group boundaries

Agenda

Your next move with serious games
START WITH THE IMMEDIATE
Pick the game that addresses your issue.
Prepare, prepare, prepare.
Make sure you have enough resources for the exercise.
Record the exercise.
Socialize the results.
Plan for the next game.
THEN MAKE SERIOUS GAMES AN ONGOING ACTIVITY
Requirements
Planning
Retrospection
Ad hoc decision-making
Rules that apply to any context, not just software development.

Be very specific about the problem you’re addressing
Complexity
Customer insight
Team dynamics
Pick one. Just one.

Pick the right game

Build serious game into regular processes

Thank you
Tom Grant
+1.650.581.3846
tgrant@forrester.com
http://blogs.forrester.com/tom_grant
@TomGrantForr
www.forrester.com

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Corporate Serious Games Are Changing The Rules Of Product Development

by Tom Grant on Sep 03, 2011

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Corporate Serious Games Are Changing The Rules Of Product Development — Presentation Transcript