Roles & distribution
Facilitator’s guide
This page is for the facilitator. It explains who receives which materials. The materials themselves come in two kinds:
- public, the same for everyone: the scenario and the shared role overview “The roles in the kickoff meeting”.
- confidential, one per person: the personal cards with a hidden negotiation briefing (secret goals, red line, trump card) – each person receives only their own.
The complete overview of all secrets and conflicts is held by the facilitator alone.
Why separate cards? — Negotiation training
The roles have deliberately conflicting interests. Everyone wants a share of the scarce development time before the conference – but not everything fits. This very conflict of interests is the training material: the RSE has to mediate and negotiate until a package emerges that everyone can support. That is why no one knows the others’ hidden goals – you have to find them out in conversation.
The roles at a glance
| # | Role | Public core interest | Confidential card |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Robin — RSE / software coordination | a viable, maintainable platform | Card 1 |
| 2 | Petra (Prof. Dr. Barn) — PI / chair | visible success carried by everyone | Card 2 |
| 3 | Mara (Dr. Melis) — Education research | quickly analysable data for the paper | Card 3 |
| 4 | Tobi (Tobias) — student assistant | learn more, avoid being overwhelmed | Card 4 |
| 5 | Sabine (Ms. Korter) — Partner school (optional) | benefit for the school, data protection | Card 5 |
The card links lead to the confidential individual cards – for the facilitator to prepare and distribute. During the round itself, only the facilitator opens these pages and hands each person their card individually.
Distribution — how it works
- Hand out the scenario and the shared role overview (The roles in the kickoff meeting) to everyone – ideally a few days in advance (shared briefing, ~5 min in the session). Both are free of secrets.
- Distribute roles by preference: let the students choose for themselves as far as possible which person they want to play (Robin, Petra, Mara, Tobi, Sabine) – whoever identifies with “their” role plays more engagedly. In case of a tie, draw lots.
- Give each person exactly one confidential role card – as its own PDF (
rolle-*.pdf) or printout. For groups of 4 use cards 1–4, for groups of 5 add card 5. - Do not show the others’ cards. The hidden goals stay secret – that is the heart of the negotiation training.
- The facilitator keeps the overall picture (all secrets + conflict matrix) and throws in the events along the timeline.
- Afterwards: a shared debrief – there comes the input on lateral leadership and the reveal of the hidden interests (see facilitator).
Role swap (optional, recommended): As in the template “First project lead”, the RSE players can switch groups – so they do not lead the group with which they prepared the game. This increases unpredictability. Variants between groups: where useful, assign slightly different RSE profiles (internal domain RSE vs. external infrastructure RSE from an RSE center). See facilitator.