SPEED BOAT 

(game)

Brief description

Draw a boat on a whiteboard or sheet of paper. You would like the boat to really move fast. Unfortunately, the boat has a few anchors holding it back. The boat is your system, and the features that your customers don’t like are its anchor. Customers write what they don’t like on an index card and place it under the boat as an anchor. They can also estimate how much faster the boat will go if that anchor were cut and add that to the card. Estimates of speed are really estimates of pain. Customers can also annotate in the anchors created by other customers. When customers are finish posting their anchors, review each one, carefully confirming your understanding of what they want to see changed in the system. One variant of the game is to ask customers to add “engines”; which represents features that can “overpower” the anchors and enable the boat to move faster.

Preparing

  • Use the best possible imagery that you can, to keep the mood playful (pictures of boats and anchors), to help everyone deal with the potentially stressful content of feedback.
  • You can consider running two sessions: one for the “loudest” crowd and another for the quieter, more thoughtful crowd.
  • Review if the customers coming to the session have unresolved topics or complaints. Although it is important to avoid addressing issues during the game, there are times that you will have to do this, so be prepare.

Playing

  • Introduce the game. Give customers a few minutes to gather their thoughts before you expect them to create anchors.
  • To help get the game started, ask a few customers for completed anchor card and tape this on the wall. Spontaneously other customers will join and add anchors.
  • Quickly group anchors with similar content and/or themes.
  • Review every single anchor with the group. Invite the whole group to comment on what was written.
  • Seek to understand the underlying reason the anchor is holding back, not to try to solve the problem or justify something.
  • Consider asking customers to vote on the top 3 to 5 anchors whose removal would have the most positive impact in the boat´s speed.

Processing Results

  • Determine the root cause or area of the problems. Some common root causes are:
    • Poor documentation
    • User inexperience
    • Defect
    • Technology incompatibility
    • Mismatched expectations
  • Characterize the perceived severity of the problem. A common approach is to classify each problem:
    • Crash with no workaround (safety issue that motivates a product recall)
    • Crash with workaround
    • Serious problem
    • Minor problem
    • Not a problem (report as a problem but it is not)
  • Characterize the priority of fixing a problem:
    • Immediate
    • Urgent
    • Before next release
    • As time allows
    • Defer

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