6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
Considering the non-techincal nature of software
project Inception activities, stakeholders can be
involved in depth and join software developer
organization at this particular moment. In fact,
addressing factors like executive support,
engagement of key stakeholders and clearly defined
needs increases the success rate of a project.
However, stakeholders' involvement is a complex
action that requires investment of extra effort and
time and be intrusive for both parties.
The strategy of using games within software
developing projects in order to address and improve
collaboration between stakeholders and development
teams can be considered as a novel and beneficial
approach. Consequently, game-based approach has
been adopted as a strategy to improve the Inception
phase outcomes.
ActiveAction is a workshop service which
objective is to clarify and process stakeholders'
needs and priorities. During the Intensive-Day,
game-based activities provide a favorable
environment in which stakeholders and development
teams collaborate and produce results of great
importance for the Inception phase of a project.
Two lines are identified as future work: (i) to
replicate the workshop in affiliates and (ii) to define
a continuous improvement process for ActiveAction.
At the moment one affiliate has replicated its first
three ActiveActions with promising results.
Moreover, documenting the method will reduce the
possibility of variation and find ways to improve.
Finally we can conclude that the inclusion of
games in such a challenging and over-whelming
activity as software projects inception, is feasible
and reported promising results which benefit both
stakeholders and software developer organizations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thank Miriam Eréndira Jiménez-
Hernández and Roberto Azrael Medina-Díaz for on-
site observation and initial analysis of the data.
This work has been funded by the GEODAS-BC
project (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional FEDER,
TIN2012-37493-C03-01), the Graduate Science and
Engineering Computing (UNAM) and the grant
scholarship program of CONACYT.
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