e-SPM : An online software project management game

Wautelet, Yves [UCL] Kolp, Manuel [UCL] Neysen, Nicolas [UCL]

Today’s software development has become a very complex task and no one has the required skills or time to resolve a sophisticated problem on his own. Software development phases need the implication of lots of people hav-ing to use concepts and ideas for which they share a common understanding. Into such a context, several software development methodologies appeared in the last thirty years. Those methodologies use different development life cy-cles, one of the most famous being the iterative one used in the Unified Process (UP). To learn project managers and computer science students to deal with such development processes few methods exist. Indeed, one can learn from ex cathedra courses, books or directly into “real life” projects but no software pro-ject simulation games exists. That is why we are developing an online multi-user game simulating the job of a project manager facing user requirements, development planning, human resources allocation, budget constraints, risk and quality management onto a UP/UML software project case study.