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Project Management gamification
21 September 2024

How project managers can use gamification to ensure a successful project

What is Gamification? And Why Should You Care?

The word ‘gamification’ comes from combining the words ‘game’ and ‘ification’.

Gamification is a practice of using game mechanics in non-game contexts. One way to describe gamification is the process of applying game design concepts and game mechanics to an activity or goal. In essence, gamification is the use of games (such as badges or trophies, points, achievements, leaderboards, levels and tracking systems) in non-game contexts like business or education. Some examples of how gamification is used include:

* Gamification of the user experience: adding game-like elements to the user interface, such as levels and points.

* Managing people Gamification: a system that allows people to contribute to their work online and get feedback on their performance, by example, in the form of badges or points.

In this article, we will look at Project Management Gamification in the context of managing people and teams.

 

What are the Benefits of Using Gamification in Project Management?

Gamification can be a business motivational strategy, and can help ensure quality work. It can be used to increase productivity levels by giving employees the opportunity to earn points for completing tasks successfully. This can be a secondary motivating factor within a project team.

 

 

Getting Started.

Your aim is to use game design to motivate players and improve engagement. The first step is identifying what motivates your team and stakeholders, which can be done through surveys or focus groups, or even just by observing how your target audience plays a certain game. Once you know what motivates them, it’s easy to create a project that utilizes these factors. For example, if you want more collaboration throughout the project cycle and want to increase motivation for specific goals, you could create a campaign with leaderboards where team members compete for recognition by best completing tasks. If you are new to the team or company, a quick way to determine the most likely attributes of team members and stakeholders is to apply the Marketing department theory of Psychographics. Instead of using demographics it attributes the likelihood of underlying motivations of individuals based on their roles, personality traits and lifestyle choices.

Once you have determined what motivates your target audience, the next step is align your project goals to rewards.

You can draw inspiration from apps like Habitica, which looks to gamify any task. You can apply some of the types of achievements that ‘players’ can and use them within your project. You could set up quests and award the achievements manually or by building automations within Slack or Microsoft Power Tools. For example, if your team are struggling to comment their code, you might set up a quest where each day that you comment code, your avatar moves closer to becoming an “Master of the Web.”

Kanban boards can be easily gamified. The ‘Done’ column could be split into different columns or sub-columns, with different achievements which allows the player to earn rewards based on their completed tasks.

 

Introducing Gamified Project Management to the team

gamified project management system needs to be based on the principles of respect, trust, and transparency. In order to achieve this, a few best practices need to be in place:

The first is that everyone involved has a clear understanding of their role and how they fit into the process.

The second is the importance of discussing roles in meetings so there are no misunderstandings or miscommunications.

Where necessary, avoid small talk and focus on the bigger picture; focus on the ‘why’.

Be mindful of your personal style, always consider the context of your conversation and how it may affect others.

Let the team know that you will be using gamification techniques and that you are not manipulating them, simply enhancing the experience.

Be sure to maintain a high level of trust among all parties involved- gamification is based on a game where trust is essential to its success.

 

5 Tips for Successfully Implementing a Game-based Approach to a Project

Here are some tips on implementing a gamified approach to Project Management:

Start with your project goals & objectives.

Determine the best way to give rewards.

Develop a plan for how you will track progress towards the goal.

Share your progress with other teams and measure success in progress towards goals, not just number of people involved.

Encourage transparency by providing data for others to see and learn from.

 

 

Practical examples of applying gamification to successfully improve your project

The project team

An example creative process within a project looks like this:

– Team members create rough drafts. Points are earned when a task is started.

– Submit drafts for critique, earn points for tasks achieved.

– Revise designs based on feedback and revise drafts as necessary. More points earned.

– Create final prototype and deliverables with stakeholders approval (e.g. website/website launch, video trailer, etc.). More points earned.

The list above could be encouraged by using points or badges that would be earned through completing specific tasks during the process. This would ensure that team members or stakeholders see tangible results for their participation and motivation levels stay high throughout the entire process.

The project stakeholders

Senior executives are often very competitive. You can capitalise on this trait by building out a leader-board or virtual car race. The stakeholders can become avatars with their LinkedIn profiles as their heads (bobble-head style). Project milestones can be added as checkpoints into the racetrack. When a checkpoint is reached the stakeholder player gets upgraded. For example their mode of transportation could increase from a skateboard to a bicycle to an old car to a luxury car. What senior executive wants to be riding a bicycle while their peer is in a Ferrari. This in itself may be motivation enough.

 

 

A checklist for incorporating gamification into a project culture

One of the best ways to implement gamification into your project is to start with a checklist of questions that you can use to assess your current project culture.

  • Who are the key stakeholders involved in this project?
  • What are their interests?
  • Are all stakeholders aligned as to what success looks like for this project?
  • How does each stakeholder prioritize their time? 
  • Is there a clear plan for aligning their priorities?
  • What are the goals or objectives of this project from a management and leadership perspective?
  • Does everyone have a clear understanding of what needs to be achieved by the end of this project cycle?
  • Do you know how much time will be required to complete this project (both up front and over the course of its lifespan)?
  • Is there an established timeline and deadline for each phase/stage of this project cycle?
  • What is the timeline for communicating status updates throughout each phase/stage of the project cycle?
  • If you’re working on any type of physical product, do you have realistic expectations on quality and delivery dates, in terms of customer service levels and customer satisfaction levels at end-of-life?
 

The 5 Essential Principles of Gamified Project Management

The 5 essential principles of gamified project management are:

Engagement: The process of connecting with the people who are going to be doing the work on your project, and getting them excited about it.

Motivation: The process of using rewards and recognition to keep people engaged in their work, or even more importantly, to help them stay motivated when they’re feeling discouraged or overwhelmed.

Learning: The process of providing continuous feedback and guidance so that people can improve their skills as they go along.

Teamwork: The process of encouraging collaboration between team members so that they can share skills, knowledge, and resources with each other as needed.

Accountability: The process of holding team members accountable for meeting agreed-upon goals or standards by rewarding them and displaying the Leader-board as publicly as possible (either online, or on a communal whiteboard).

 

How to Ensure that Your Company’s Culture is Prepared for a Game-based Project

With more and more companies exploring game-based project approaches, we need to create a cultural foundation that can support that approach, provide the benefits,  without manipulating people. These  steps can ensure that your company culture is strong enough to adopt gamification.

Establish clear corporate values: Game-based approaches create new business awareness. Your company must clearly state its values so that the company’s effectiveness and reputation is not affected.

Create an approach for all employees: When offering game-based approaches, make sure your culture is open enough for them, across all departments.

Create additional social activities: If gamification is to be an important part of your company then it also important to add other activities and social outings to continue that theme within the company context.

Promote and support employee development: When employees have the opportunity to develop personally, a culture is created that welcomes game-based approaches.

Make sure there’s plenty of time to rest: Employees should have enough time to relax and cool down when they’re not working.

 

Conclusion

Gamification is a proven technique that helps make people more responsible and engaged. It can be used to ensure a successful project by motivating team members and stakeholders. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can ensure your project succeeds with a happy and motivated team.

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