Software Engineering Process Game

• Sponsor: NSF and ACM SIGCSE
• Target audience: Computer Science students at Ohio University and University of Mary Washington
• Synopsis: This is a team software engineering education game based on the SimSE game from UC Irvine.

Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/OHIO%20Outreach/173/190/34

MO-SEProcess is a 3-D Multiplayer Online Software Engineering Process game based on the SimSE game (a 2-D single player game) from UC Irvine (http://www.ics.uci.edu/~emilyo/SimSE/). It aims to teach students the principles of the software engineering process by simulating the development of a moderately sized software project.

The player will serve as a software engineer, and collaborate with other players to develop a software system. In the game, the player manages the role, by giving him or her tasks such as “creating requirement”, “reviewing design”.

The goal of the game is to release the software to the customer as complete as possible and with as few errors as possible. After the release, the game will end by giving a team score between 0 and 100. Initially, the team will be given a fixed time units for the project. The software should be delivered by the schedule time, otherwise their team score will be zero.

To play the game, the player just needs to touch the icons in the monitor in front of him or her. During the game, every player can adjust his or her current tasks by touching the “artifact” icon and touching the “task” icon under that artifact. The player can also take a break or go back to work by touching the "rest state" icon. The player’s energy is shown in the “energy” pie chart.

The player can monitor the progress of the project by examining "artifact progress" (shown as progress bar), "artifact errors" (shown as three digits) for each artifact, and “integration progress” (shown as progress bar) for the whole project. The player can also know the status of the other players through the status board above the monitor.

To get the good result, the player has to choose the task according to his or her role’s ability and follows the software developing process rules (e.g. design before coding, or always test everything). Therefore the player can learn the principles of software development processes unconsciously through playing the game. Since the game is multi-player online, it also requires the collaboration skills among the team.