Engaging Games & Simulations
Since Covid-19 sent a lot of us to do our jobs on-line we’ve had a lot of time to adjust to life and work using the remote tools and techniques available to us. A frustration for me and other Agile coaches is the difficulty of translating what works as an in person game or simulation to an equivalent remote one.
Do your remote workshops feel like this?
You might find yourself killing engagement with PowerPoint slides
Like most coaches I have my go-to games that work well in person. In person you would have found I had a pack of cards, a bouncy ball and always always the posties, sharpies and whiteboard markers ready for some impromptu games and simulations. I could be ready very quickly and loved my usual games for their simple, effective and FAST lessons.
The beauty of a physical game is that getting participants out of their seats and moving around is in itself very engaging. People generally remember games as a positive part of their workshop or training.
When I first adapted my training to remote delivery I actually tried to fake a simulated ball throwing game with an online tool - and that didn’t work at all. Too many rules, stilted play and none of the fun of throwing and catching a real ball.
Do not try this at home!
Back to the virtual drawing board
The good news is that engaging and fun simulations and games can be designed with a little thought, a bit of planning and practice and the use of a decent on-line tool.
Think about:
What is the intention for your game or simulation?
Who is the game for? Are they novice or experienced players in terms of the topic and the tools you have available?
How much time do you have to play it?
and then go forth and design your game from that point of view. Remember to experiment on family members and friends first if it’s complicated!
In real (virtual) life…
One game I created worked quite well for simulating a few different aspects of problems of creating flow and the problems of waiting for work in other people’s queues.
It takes quite a bit of set up and explaining the rules, but the game play itself is fast and fun!
This game worked better than I had hoped, and ended up generating discussions on other outcomes and concepts that I couldn't have predicted - sometimes it just goes like that. You have to try it with a group and see what happens.
The instructions on how to set up and play the game are below, including ideas on how to extend it.
I hope you’ll give it a go, and get in touch to let us know how it went for you.
A Remote Friendly Game for Flow and Pull
Tools:
An online whiteboard tool that allows you to add images and icons. Mural and Miro are great examples. The pictured boards below use Miro and I tried Google Jamboard but it took longer to set up and reset the game, because you can’t group select on Jamboard.
You could also use a tool like Trello for this game.
Set up:
Set up your board to have around 50 items in a random ‘backlog’ of items on the left. Make it gifs, pictures, and icons in the categories of House, Dog, Cat and Future tech. You can interpret what the categories mean, e.g. Future Tech could be a mobile phone or a fancy picture of something futuristic like a robot. House could be furniture that belongs in a house.
Here’s the real board I use in Mural - note you can ‘hide’ Round 2 until you’re ready to play
Here’s one I made in Jamboard, hmm, needs more items on the left before I can play a good game with this one.
Setup time:
Allow 30 mins to set up your board
Game time:
20-30 mins, longer for extensions
Players:
Ask for 5 volunteers: 1 Queue Manager and 4 ‘Workers’ who will own 4 specialist group spaces.
1 House , 1 Dog , 1 Cat and 1 Future Tech
The Goal:
Get as many items sorted into their specialist groups as possible in short timed rounds.
The Rules:
The Queue Manager will be in charge of ensuring only 1 thing is queued at any given time. Only the Queue Manager can queue work.
Each of the workers is responsible for moving their items after the Queue Manager has moved their specialist type of work into the queue.
If you have more than 5 people in your group everyone else is a stakeholder.
Stakeholders can try and 'Shout the loudest' and instruct The Queue Manager on which item to queue next (just to add confusion).
This makes it a game where everyone gets to interact, the five people can move things but everyone can shout and create confusion - just like real life.
The Game:
Once you have shared the board (help everyone access the board) and shared the Rules, then offer time to answer any questions. Then start your timer for Round 1.
Round 1 —> 1 minute
Time a round where the Queue Manager has to one by one put an item on the Queue. The Workers move the items into the specialist ‘space’ if they see an item that matches their speciality.
Stakeholders are instructed to shout during the one minute round.
When time is up count how many items were moved into each group.
(You have an option to ask the people for improvements and have more 1 min rounds to see if they can beat their previous score)
Round 2 —> 1 minute
Now change the rules slightly
The New Rules:
Now reveal the next round area of the board where your new groups ( and Workers) are now categorised by colour, Blue, Green, Red and Brown.
This time you can retire the Queue Manager and allow each of the workers to ‘Pull’ their work into their specialist group themselves.
Now they are not constrained and can pull as fast as they find items. Instead of House, Dog, Cat and Future Tech you are using Blue, Green, Red and Brown to sort. Ensure your Workers know their new category and time them to see how many items they can sort.
Ensure they are only moving one item at a time though!
Stakeholders can still shout for the items they want.
When time is up count how many items were moved into each group.
Expected outcomes
The expected outcomes are that you get significantly more items sorted if you don’t use a Queue Manager to move each item into a queue first. By allowing specialists to ‘Pull’ work instead of having it backed up behind a queue, efficiency increases.
Some prompting questions to ask…
What did you observe while you were a Worker waiting for your work to get into the queue?
How did it feel when you were a Queue Manager? How did you decide what item to queue next?
What was the difference when there was no Queue Manager? How did you decide what item to go and get next?
Stakeholders - did your shouting make any difference to the work that was sorted?
All - does it help to have stakeholders shouting for their work?
Be ready for…
Running out of backlog on the second round. Potentially you can get the expert users of this tool to be dynamically adding items to the backlog to see how much throughput is actually possible!
Round 2 has significant amounts of ambiguity because a brown cat may be sitting on a green mat. What happens? Do workers ‘fight’ or are they quick to pull their obvious work items first?
You might need to create a new category if you keep playing rounds, for example, you can sort Living versus Nonliving items, you can categorise on Image Size or Shape, e.g. Square, Rectangle, Irregular etc, You can sort on Gifs versus Images versus Icons.
Noise! One of the fun aspects of this game is that people who want to have a bit of a shout can get involved even if you are controlling the game play with only 4 ‘workers’.
Possible game extensions
If you have time to play several more rounds then consider a ‘No specialists’ round where anyone can move any item into the right group. See what’s possible if you remove the constraint of a specialist skill set. Perhaps more chaos will occur? Perhaps more work will be sorted?
Finally…
End with a discussion on the pros and cons to queueing work, how to create the magic of ‘Pull’ systems in the workplace, and what effects we might see when work is waiting in queues in real life.