Improving software projects inception phase using games ActiveAction workshop

Studies have demonstrated that an important factor to increase the success rate of software projects is the involvement of key stakeholders at the right time, in order to define business objectives, scope of the project and requirements. The Inception phase of projects is in charge to provide these outcomes and is suitable to really involve stakeholders as team members because of the non-technical nature of the activities. However, since the stakeholders' involvement is a time- and money-consuming activity, it is important to maximize its efficiency. With that in mind, ludic aspect inherent to games can be used as a strategy to optimize the Inception phase. This paper presents ActiveAction, a game-based workshop used as an alternative for the software project's Inception phase in order to increase its effectiveness and improve the stakeholders' involvement in the project. ActiveAction combines classical and game-based techniques which permit a deep involvement of stakeholders and a collaborative identification of objectives, constraints and risks during an intensive workshop oriented to project conceptualization. ActiveAction workshop resulted in a successful game-based strategy that has improved the Inception phase of 19 projects with different customers. After-workshop surveys, projects outcomes and customer satisfaction indicate validity of the method. ActiveAction is a valuable game-based alternative to carry out the Inception phase in a software project. It makes possible to get an important amount of information, directly from key stakeholders in a short period of time increasing the success rate of projects.