Battleships as a Metaphor for Plans of Planning Exercise

I have learned from engaging with the module that leveraging Agile over Waterfall in terms of software development is particularly useful when there is ambiguity and when, the customer is not certain on what problems they want the software to address. The lecturer aided this understanding through instructing us to play a game of battleships. The battleships, were used as a metaphor for planning.

First, the lecturer instructed us to play a game using a forty-shot iteration e.g. creating one finished product, similar to the waterfall model. Then, we were instructed to play again using a lower number of iterations per game e.g. 10 shots per iteration therefore creating four iterations before the game was over. All members recorded a higher balance after playing the game using multiple iterations. This was because of the high levels of ambiguity, as we did not know where the battleships were.

Below are two results I received from playing the game

1. Using 40 shots (i.e. no iterations)

2. Using 5 shots per iteration (i.e. 8 iterations per game)

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Design, Development, Creativity

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