Serious Play Forum

[Ariel Fligler]

Greetings,

I was wondering if anyone has used LSP for software architecture design ? having a team of software engineers, architects, UX, quality etc. presents an attractive opportunity to use LSP ability to have people from different backgrounds in the same language. Also, software architecture can be physically being built with relationships between objects and playing war games to find holes in the architecture. Further, it can be combined with Design Thinking mindset and create an iterative process of architecture creation (using a bottom-up approach of creating small fragments of the architecture and combining them in negotiation).

Has anyone did a session like this or using a different scenario and can share his\her insights ?

Thanks,

Ariel

[Emiel]

Hi Ariel,

Have you seen this: http://seriousplaypro.com/2015/09/04/lego-case-study-user-experience-design/. I’ve also got a document titled “User requirements with LEGO”. Might not be exactly what you look for, but may give inspiration. I used it to create a workshop aimed at IT and business to create their vision on an ideal workplace.

Let me know if you’re interested!

Regards,

Emiel

[kalena]

Hi Emiel,

would love to read more about your approach of eliciting user requirements with LEGO. Would you mind sharing?

Thank you!

Best regards,
kalena

[Ariel Fligler]

Hello Emiel,

I somehow missed your reply. Sorry for this.

thanks for your answer. I’d love to get that document. I’m not sure it is exactly the same but any insight on doing LSP in the software engineering context would be helpful.

Thank you,

Ariel

[Emiel]

Hey Ariel,

I’ve got a PDF describing how LEGO SERIOUS PLAY can be used for “User Requirements with Lego”.

If you can PM your e-mail to me I will send it to you.

Regards,

Emiel

[Emiel]

You’ve got mail!

Regards,

Emiel

[Eli De Friend]

Hi Ariel,
I imagine that the PDF that Emiel is sending you is the document produced by Elisabetta Frick and Lorenzo Cantoni at the Università della Svizzera Italiana. I read the text a few years back and I would say that it could be useful for someone who had not been fully trained as an LSP facilitator and was rather working as a business analyst or software solution architect. You might want to bear in mind the fact that Elisabetta and Lorenzo are working within the faculty of communications sciences; so I think that there main interest is how do you get the user requirements out of the heads of the users. Still, it’s definitely worth a read, even if you are more hoping to go into design.
An application that I developed for Swisscom and still use in an academic setting at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne was a module to help a project team design a customer experience. Again, this not exactly what you want.
I could also point you in the direction of Jens Hoffmann and Katrin Elster from Strategic Play in Germany. They come more from the IT side and first got into LSP, using it as vehicle for kicking off IT projects. You might want to try asking them if they know of anyone in the IT world that has already done something similar.

All that said, however, I am very concerned about the fact that you mention the hierarchical nature of your military client. LSP, as you know, is specifically designed to get round the communication barriers established by hierarchies. Therefore, I would strongly recommend that you insist to your client that for the period of the workshop, reporting lines must be put aside. If you feel that they cannot let go on this point, you might want to suggest that the workshop will use LEGO bricks, but that it will not be using LEGO Serious Play. There is plenty of time for imposing one’s dictatorial views outside of the LSP workshop ;-)

Good luck in your search.

Eli

[Bruce Scharlau]

The PDF on User Requirements with Lego can be found at https://d3gxp3iknbs7bs.cloudfront.net/attachments/c6a2cc2e83a9849916a88ffc6548b6736cc51250.pdf Let’s just share links folks to things that are readily available.

[Jan Gentsch]

I have used LSP for software architecture development as well as for some related IT problems.

What works well is to use LSP for building risks, non-functional-requirement-drivers (architecture goals), users (end-users and architecture-users) as well as metaphors for core principles and building-blocks of the architecture. All of these can be assembled as landscapes or shared models to clarify and communicate the underlying intend and trade-offs of an architecture. As with all LSP workshop, I usually start at the end and try to picture what aspects would be important to represent in the landscape that the participants will be building. Then I try to figure out in which steps that landscape could be realized, in order for the participants to have useful conversations and insights whilst on their way.

In that sense it’s not about finding the concrete solution but about finding out what is important, what is not and how a good solution would feel like. Just like the LSP standard applications are not about concrete results or agreement but about the participant discovering how they can act with shared intent towards a common goal.

To finish off, the usual warning: LSP is not about modeling the real world solutions and in particular with software (architecture) you probably find, that there are a number of better options available for that. Whilst „finding holes in an architecture“ and „negotiating solutions“ may be important goals within your context, LSP is probably not a good fit for that.

[Emiel]

Hi Eli,

that was indeed the document I did send. Although not an exact match to the question, it is certainly useful for inspiration.

@scharlau I wasn’t able to find the link that fast so decided to mail the document. Could not find a way to post the PDF in the forum.

Greetings

Emiel

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