Business Value in London
Vera, Portia and I will play the Business Value Game at the annual Software Practice Advancement conference. This year’s edition will be in London from 5 to 8 April 2009.
If you haven’t played it yet, this game lets you play in a team of account managers who have to prioritise a portfolio of projects for their development team. To win, you have to make difficult business decisions:
- Which project goes first?
- Do I start many projects at once or do I focus on one project?
- Do I focus on revenue or customer happiness?
- Can I afford to lose that customer? Can I afford to keep that customer?
- Do I invest in process and productivity?
- How do I deal with variance in performance?
In the beginning, the game is very easy. In each iteration we add another twist so that by the end of the game, the players are juggling loads of projects and customers while dealing with unreliable developers who want new tools. Many developers came out of this game with increased respect for the account and product managers in their company 🙂
It’s instructive and lots of fun. If you don’t believe me, ask Laurent Morisseau and the other participants of Agile Open France.
But in the real world…
Of course, the real world is always a bit more difficult than a simulation. After the game, we run a workshop where the participants look at how they can apply the game’s ideas to a range of circumstances: product development, many small projects, large projects, support and maintenance…
See you there if you want to generate more value.
