05 Exercise: The Telephone Game

About This Exercise

The Telephone Game demonstrates why the V-Model’s sequential phase separation leads to information loss and misunderstandings.

In traditional waterfall development:

• Customers describe what they want
• Analysts write specifications (without ongoing customer contact)
• Developers implement from specs (without seeing the original request)
• Testers verify the result (often discovering mismatches too late)

This exercise compresses months of miscommunication into 12 minutes!

How It Works

1. Everyone joins the room using the code shown on screen
2. Round 1 (Customer): Write a feature request for a study room booking app
3. Round 2 (Analyst): Read someone else’s request, write a formal spec
4. Round 3 (Developer): Read a spec, describe your implementation
5. Round 4 (Tester): Compare the original request with what was built

Key rule: No asking questions between phases!

Ready to Play?

Join or create a room below: