Studio gamification with the help of available tools
The term “gamification” itself, you have probably heard - it has recently become fashionable again. It means something like this: transfer game mechanics on non-game processes. Why are the latter (as planned) become more interesting and more readily perceived by those who are involved in them.
We analyzed the internal processes in our studio and talk about how to gamify without special technologies and tools - literally with the help of a plastic bottle and electrical tape.
So, if you command a detachment of developers, layout designers, designers, but at least someone - you can get a grasp.
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If we follow the banal logic, then the employee should return the date / time data type to the question of the chief “when?” However, this almost never happens, and instead of the desired data type, the employee returns another one, called “all my problems”.
You can methodically ask a subordinate with an eternal question until he starts hysteria, and you can turn torture into a game.
The gaming solution we chose is Planning Poker cards, a planning tool that evangelicals of agile development so love to preach.
First, we took the usual office paper and with a regular office marker drew ourselves a hand-made deck.
Our art director passed by, saw what we were doing, and offered to make normal maps:
They were so inspired that they made an online service , where you can plan for Planning Poker without leaving your home. So, if it becomes interesting - try.
Total: planning has become a much more cultural and quiet event. You can not even lock in a separate room, so as not to interfere with the rest. And, although most programmers refer to poker as a regular game for their bosses, they are playing.
If you are hosting retrospectives, then you will agree that after them there remains a pack of sentences "how this can be improved."
The process can be better if you solve some “one-off” problem. For example, put two monitors to the tester - it will catch bugs twice as fast, and the testing process will improve (this is a rough example, of course).
And it happens that in order to improve the process, it is necessary to work on the process itself. And one-time action is not to get off here, otherwise everything will be limited to “come, talk, disperse”, at most - writing an article in the corporate Wiki. This approach provokes to put something metallic, oblong and threaded on the improvements.
Thus, the ideal scheme for introducing changes with retrospectives number one turns into chaos.
The game solution that we have implemented:
We called the board "Woodpecker-board." How it works: four cells are four business weeks. All innovations from the retrospectives are written on stickers and placed in cell number one. Every day, stickers are read out on the morning managerial planning, a dot is put on each point with a marker (symbolizes the blow of the woodpecker's beak). When a sticker scores five points, it moves to the next column. The sticker stayed on the board for 21 days (one extra) - you can judge whether the change has taken root.
Total: changes designed to improve the process are not lost and are not forgotten. You can keep track of how much this or that innovation is already trying to take root, how many of them eventually take root, and how many go into non-existence.
Sometimes employees have to make comments that do not relate to their work directly. But without which it is difficult to achieve a positive working environment. It's about everyday life (“Be polite,” “Meet your teammate,” “Clean up in the kitchen,” etc.).
Sometimes this “advice” is like hypnosis. Well, it almost always looks like hypnosis. Accordingly, no one follows your zombie advice. The task remains open: how to convey the message to the addressee so that it is learned?
The game solution is not serious advice, which can be arranged, for example, like this:
We also write “tips of the day” every morning and deliver to the workplace. Some even began to collect them.
Total: Not serious form plays into the hands of quite serious advice. This is more pleasant to follow than dry declarations.
For many, I think it happened: the developer keeps silent on retrospectives, and then he takes and suddenly leaves. Because you all got him.
Game antidote: in a well-covered and at the same time secluded place is a calendar (the Japanese call it Niko Niko):
Photos are project managers. Empty cells are the days of the week. On the right are tricolor buttons. Any developer can go to the calendar and evaluate their impressions of working with the manager. At the end of the week, the calendar is photographed, and its results, among other agenda, are discussed at the Friday managerial retrospective.
Total: Gives motivation to project managers to work on themselves. Gives an emotional "outlet" developers. Negative moment: especially sensitive several red buttons are able to knock out and demotivate.
There is such a well-known game mechanism - countdown. Usually built into the game to make it more dynamic. In the development of a kind of timer - this is the date of the deadline.
And again about everyday processes.
Studio fridge. It always has such a picture: a dozen open packs of mayonnaise, a few frozen cucumbers, someone's breakfast and — certainly, something unknown and foul-smelling. Where to look for the owner is not clear: judging by the state of the unknown, he went on vacation and did not return.
What they did: they brought to the attention of everyone that the cleaning lady had the right to take everything she liked from the refrigerator on Friday night. This slightly improved the memory of the team.
It was about short-term activity. Now about the constant.
In order for the managerial staff not to be late for morning planning meetings, they invented a beer foundation. Each latecomer pays for his mistake by a piece of paper in a hundred rubles.
The result of both innovations: we have a clean refrigerator and a reserve budget for holding in-court events with beer and pizza. An important factor here is voluntary beginnings. Forced over demotivates.
Mechanics are well adapted to those processes where “supervision” is needed. In our case, there was a problem: books were sometimes not returned to the corporate library, and they had to be searched for with dogs.
What they did: they transferred the library to the undivided possession of our analyst. As Emma seeks to categorize and structure everything that comes handy to her, the same blessed fate befell the library.
Books are divided into thematic sectors, and each book is assigned a unique code. By the way, for everyone who picks up a book, another game mechanic, a kind of quest, is already in effect: he picked up a book, peeled off a sticker with a number, stuck it on his portrait. I read it, put the sticker back on the spine, and the book in my sector. And without the traditional library red tape, and books in place.
Total: you can see who and what is reading at the moment, books are returned after reading and are not lost. The analyst has her own “child”, for whom she cares like a room orchid.
If you ask about the topic of gamification on the Internet, then the very first mechanic that you most likely stumble upon is a “board of leaders”, a “rating of winners”, call it what you like.
For example, a vivid example of building an application just around the leaderboard is foursquare.
Initially, we conducted an experiment with the introduction of a board that spurs motivation on salespeople. The competitive effect worked to the full: for three months, the studio's profit increased by 12.2%. Total labor costs for implementation and monitoring of implementation is about 4–8 hours.
After such a success, the first thought of any leader will be: it must be applied to everyone! Programmers, designers, account managers, etc.
We studied the thematic software. If there are users of Jira, then there is a separate plugin for you, called Jira Hero, which builds a “table of the most-most” based on the number of closed tasks, fixed bugs and other “programmer” metrics.
But from a business point of view, the same number of completed tasks has nothing to do with the commercial success of the project. Business needs other mechanics, and we tried to “distribute points” to developers on the basis of the time worked, the amount of income that this developer brought, the number of bugs in the code, the number of successfully completed projects ... Similarly produced over designers and SEO.
The experiment failed.
The main reason: the uncertainty of the evaluation criteria. Also an important factor: not all developer actions affect the company's profits directly (and this is the most universal and easy-to-understand metric).
However, the demotivation of the male half of the studio’s population was toy compared with the passions that were in full swing among the female.
Uncomplicated economy of the experiment on the "female" SEO-department:
A manager must understand that his employees do not do it intentionally. Probably, they have some objectively subjective reasons for this, and your task is to understand them, and not to introduce a “universal metric”. By the way, introducing the latter, be prepared for the fact that you wake up in people not the desire to work better, but the desire to adjust to the metric, to optimize it “for yourself”.
Introducing game mechanics (and indeed something new), do not forget about respect. Your job as a manager is to unlock the potential of your players, and not to impose games on them that no one wants to play.
Community gamification:
Googling:
" 47 game mechanics "
Try the software:
We analyzed the internal processes in our studio and talk about how to gamify without special technologies and tools - literally with the help of a plastic bottle and electrical tape.
So, if you command a detachment of developers, layout designers, designers, but at least someone - you can get a grasp.
')
1. Gambling as part of the workflow
If we follow the banal logic, then the employee should return the date / time data type to the question of the chief “when?” However, this almost never happens, and instead of the desired data type, the employee returns another one, called “all my problems”.
You can methodically ask a subordinate with an eternal question until he starts hysteria, and you can turn torture into a game.
The gaming solution we chose is Planning Poker cards, a planning tool that evangelicals of agile development so love to preach.
The essence of the technique: the team gathers at the same table, the manager makes a feature for evaluation. Participants think, then everyone takes a card with a number and puts it face down (so as not to embarrass with his assessment of who else thinks). Maps turn over, compare values, discuss results. And in the end come to an agreement.
First, we took the usual office paper and with a regular office marker drew ourselves a hand-made deck.
Our art director passed by, saw what we were doing, and offered to make normal maps:
They were so inspired that they made an online service , where you can plan for Planning Poker without leaving your home. So, if it becomes interesting - try.
Total: planning has become a much more cultural and quiet event. You can not even lock in a separate room, so as not to interfere with the rest. And, although most programmers refer to poker as a regular game for their bosses, they are playing.
2. Board innovations from Woodpecker Woody
If you are hosting retrospectives, then you will agree that after them there remains a pack of sentences "how this can be improved."
The process can be better if you solve some “one-off” problem. For example, put two monitors to the tester - it will catch bugs twice as fast, and the testing process will improve (this is a rough example, of course).
And it happens that in order to improve the process, it is necessary to work on the process itself. And one-time action is not to get off here, otherwise everything will be limited to “come, talk, disperse”, at most - writing an article in the corporate Wiki. This approach provokes to put something metallic, oblong and threaded on the improvements.
Thus, the ideal scheme for introducing changes with retrospectives number one turns into chaos.
The game solution that we have implemented:
We called the board "Woodpecker-board." How it works: four cells are four business weeks. All innovations from the retrospectives are written on stickers and placed in cell number one. Every day, stickers are read out on the morning managerial planning, a dot is put on each point with a marker (symbolizes the blow of the woodpecker's beak). When a sticker scores five points, it moves to the next column. The sticker stayed on the board for 21 days (one extra) - you can judge whether the change has taken root.
According to one theory for 21 days you can get rid of addiction or instill a positive one. Therefore, for the board was chosen just such an interval.
Total: changes designed to improve the process are not lost and are not forgotten. You can keep track of how much this or that innovation is already trying to take root, how many of them eventually take root, and how many go into non-existence.
3. "Spread the smell of violets!"
Sometimes employees have to make comments that do not relate to their work directly. But without which it is difficult to achieve a positive working environment. It's about everyday life (“Be polite,” “Meet your teammate,” “Clean up in the kitchen,” etc.).
Sometimes this “advice” is like hypnosis. Well, it almost always looks like hypnosis. Accordingly, no one follows your zombie advice. The task remains open: how to convey the message to the addressee so that it is learned?
The game solution is not serious advice, which can be arranged, for example, like this:
We also write “tips of the day” every morning and deliver to the workplace. Some even began to collect them.
Total: Not serious form plays into the hands of quite serious advice. This is more pleasant to follow than dry declarations.
4. Game mechanics “Personal life” and “Voting”
For many, I think it happened: the developer keeps silent on retrospectives, and then he takes and suddenly leaves. Because you all got him.
Game antidote: in a well-covered and at the same time secluded place is a calendar (the Japanese call it Niko Niko):
Photos are project managers. Empty cells are the days of the week. On the right are tricolor buttons. Any developer can go to the calendar and evaluate their impressions of working with the manager. At the end of the week, the calendar is photographed, and its results, among other agenda, are discussed at the Friday managerial retrospective.
Total: Gives motivation to project managers to work on themselves. Gives an emotional "outlet" developers. Negative moment: especially sensitive several red buttons are able to knock out and demotivate.
5. Mechanics of permanent and temporary activity
There is such a well-known game mechanism - countdown. Usually built into the game to make it more dynamic. In the development of a kind of timer - this is the date of the deadline.
And again about everyday processes.
Studio fridge. It always has such a picture: a dozen open packs of mayonnaise, a few frozen cucumbers, someone's breakfast and — certainly, something unknown and foul-smelling. Where to look for the owner is not clear: judging by the state of the unknown, he went on vacation and did not return.
What they did: they brought to the attention of everyone that the cleaning lady had the right to take everything she liked from the refrigerator on Friday night. This slightly improved the memory of the team.
It was about short-term activity. Now about the constant.
In order for the managerial staff not to be late for morning planning meetings, they invented a beer foundation. Each latecomer pays for his mistake by a piece of paper in a hundred rubles.
The result of both innovations: we have a clean refrigerator and a reserve budget for holding in-court events with beer and pizza. An important factor here is voluntary beginnings. Forced over demotivates.
6. Game mechanics "Private property"
Mechanics are well adapted to those processes where “supervision” is needed. In our case, there was a problem: books were sometimes not returned to the corporate library, and they had to be searched for with dogs.
What they did: they transferred the library to the undivided possession of our analyst. As Emma seeks to categorize and structure everything that comes handy to her, the same blessed fate befell the library.
Books are divided into thematic sectors, and each book is assigned a unique code. By the way, for everyone who picks up a book, another game mechanic, a kind of quest, is already in effect: he picked up a book, peeled off a sticker with a number, stuck it on his portrait. I read it, put the sticker back on the spine, and the book in my sector. And without the traditional library red tape, and books in place.
Total: you can see who and what is reading at the moment, books are returned after reading and are not lost. The analyst has her own “child”, for whom she cares like a room orchid.
7. Leaderboard from Hell
If you ask about the topic of gamification on the Internet, then the very first mechanic that you most likely stumble upon is a “board of leaders”, a “rating of winners”, call it what you like.
For example, a vivid example of building an application just around the leaderboard is foursquare.
Initially, we conducted an experiment with the introduction of a board that spurs motivation on salespeople. The competitive effect worked to the full: for three months, the studio's profit increased by 12.2%. Total labor costs for implementation and monitoring of implementation is about 4–8 hours.
After such a success, the first thought of any leader will be: it must be applied to everyone! Programmers, designers, account managers, etc.
We studied the thematic software. If there are users of Jira, then there is a separate plugin for you, called Jira Hero, which builds a “table of the most-most” based on the number of closed tasks, fixed bugs and other “programmer” metrics.
But from a business point of view, the same number of completed tasks has nothing to do with the commercial success of the project. Business needs other mechanics, and we tried to “distribute points” to developers on the basis of the time worked, the amount of income that this developer brought, the number of bugs in the code, the number of successfully completed projects ... Similarly produced over designers and SEO.
The experiment failed.
The main reason: the uncertainty of the evaluation criteria. Also an important factor: not all developer actions affect the company's profits directly (and this is the most universal and easy-to-understand metric).
However, the demotivation of the male half of the studio’s population was toy compared with the passions that were in full swing among the female.
Uncomplicated economy of the experiment on the "female" SEO-department:
Duration of the experiment: 2 months.
Financial damage: ~ 200,000 rubles.
Loss of personnel: 2 employees.
The term rehabilitation of the moral atmosphere: 3 months.
As a general conclusion
A manager must understand that his employees do not do it intentionally. Probably, they have some objectively subjective reasons for this, and your task is to understand them, and not to introduce a “universal metric”. By the way, introducing the latter, be prepared for the fact that you wake up in people not the desire to work better, but the desire to adjust to the metric, to optimize it “for yourself”.
Introducing game mechanics (and indeed something new), do not forget about respect. Your job as a manager is to unlock the potential of your players, and not to impose games on them that no one wants to play.
Community gamification:
Googling:
" 47 game mechanics "
Try the software:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/189112/
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