Teaching Global Software Development through Game Design

In order to be prepared for careers in todays global economy, software engineering students need to understand the issues, methods, and practices associated with Global Software Development (GSD). One approach to teaching GSD is to conduct a GSD project class involving student teams from different institutions in different countries. This approach has the advantage of giving students first-hand experience with the barriers to collaboration and other issues faced by software development teams engaged in GSD. However, this approach is resource-intensive and requires cooperation among institutions. This paper presents an alternate approach based on game design, where students learn GSD concepts by developing a GSD simulation game. Following this approach, students learn about GSD through implementing a game engine that simulates the effects of global distance on a distributed software project. The experience shows that students seem to grasp the concepts and issues as a side effect of implementing the game.