Collaborative Games: A Fun Factor in BA World

If you’re a business analyst, you know how challenging it can be to elicit requirements from stakeholders. Sometimes they don’t know what they want, sometimes they have conflicting opinions, and sometimes they just don’t want to talk to you at all. 😢

But what if there was a way to make requirements elicitation more fun, engaging, and productive?

There is a way that would encourage stakeholders to share their ideas, collaborate with each other, and create a shared understanding of the problem and the solution. What is that?

Well! It’s called Collaborative Games 🎮

Hello fellow BAs, and Welcome Back for another technique in the series Business Analysis Techniques.

What are Collaborative Games?

Collaborative games are not just for kids. They are serious tools that can help business analysts achieve their goals in a fun and effective way. Collaborative games are interactive activities that bring together a group of stakeholders to work towards a common goal, such as understanding a problem, generating ideas, or finding solutions. Collaborative games use gameplay elements, such as rules, challenges, rewards, and feedback, to motivate participants and support collaboration.

Collaborative games are a useful way to elicit stakeholder requirements, as they encourage active participation, engagement, communication, and collaboration among team members. They also foster creativity, lateral thinking, and shared knowledge. Collaborative games can also help overcome some of the common challenges of requirements elicitation, such as:

Stakeholder boredom or resistance
Lack of stakeholder involvement or commitment
Ambiguous or incomplete requirements
Conflicting or inconsistent stakeholder perspectives
Misunderstanding or misalignment of stakeholder needs

How to Use Collaborative Games Effectively?

Collaborative games have rules that keep them moving forward and may be time-boxed. Most collaborative games have three steps: opening, exploration, and closing.

The opening step involves participants learning the rules and generating ideas.
The exploration step engages participants in finding connections among their ideas, testing ideas, and experimenting with new ideas.
The closing step involves assessing the ideas and determining which ones are most useful and productive.

The facilitator plays an important role in guiding the game and ensuring that all participants have a chance to contribute. The facilitator also helps document the results of the game and translate them into actionable requirements.

The activities involved in collaborative games can vary depending on the type of game, but they often include:

Moving sticky notes
Writing on whiteboards
Drawing pictures
Voting or ranking options
Asking questions
Giving feedback

These activities help stimulate visual and tactile learning, which can enhance memory retention and comprehension. They also help create a more relaxed and informal atmosphere, which can reduce stress and foster trust among stakeholders.

To get the most out of collaborative games, here are some tips to follow:

Choose the right game for the right purpose. Consider the goal, scope, context, and audience of your elicitation activity, and select a game that matches them.
Prepare the game well. Define the problem, the rules, the roles, the materials, and the time frame of the game. Make sure you have everything you need before you start playing.
Facilitate the game well. Explain the game clearly, keep it moving forward, encourage participation, manage conflicts, document results, and follow up with actions.
Evaluate the game well. Assess the effectiveness of the game, collect feedback from participants, identify lessons learned, and make improvements for future games.

Types of Collaborative Games

There are many popular collaborative games. Below are examples of some of those:

Product Box

In this game, the participants create a box for a product or service that they want to offer to customers. They use the box to identify some features and benefits that would appeal to their target market. This game helps elicit stakeholder needs and expectations, as well as prioritize requirements.

Affinity Maps

In this game, the participants write down features or ideas on sticky notes and group similar ones together. This game helps to identify patterns, themes, and categories among the elicited information.

Fishbowl

In this game, the participants are split into two groups. One group talks about the topic while the other group listens actively and documents their observations. This game helps to elicit different perspectives, opinions, and feedback on a topic, as well as promote active listening and feedback.

Build a Bridge

In this game, the participants are divided into two teams and each team is given a set of materials to build a bridge. The teams have to communicate and collaborate with each other to build a bridge that meets certain criteria. This helps in teamwork, better communication, and collaboration.

Improv Olympics

In this game, the participants are divided into teams and each team is given a random topic or scenario to act out. The teams have to improvise and use their creativity and humor to perform. This helps in bringing out different perspectives and observations.

Deserted Island

In this game, the participants are divided into teams and each team is given a list of limited resources. The teams have to brainstorm and discuss how to use the resources to survive and escape from a deserted island. This helps in generating ideas.

Draw Toast

In this game, the participants draw a diagram of how to make toast. They then compare their diagrams with each other and look for similarities and differences. This game helps elicit stakeholder assumptions and mental models, as well as illustrate complex processes or systems.

Empathy Maps

In this game, the participants create a persona of a user or stakeholder and fill in four quadrants: what they say, what they do, what they think, and what they feel in relation to a product or service. This game helps to elicit user needs, goals, pain points, and emotions.

Innovation Game

In this game, the participants use various techniques such as brainstorming, prototyping, testing, or storytelling to generate innovative ideas for solving a problem or creating value. This game helps elicit stakeholder creativity and collaboration, as well as validate solutions.

Speed Boat

This game involves drawing a speed boat that represents the current state of a project or a system and adding anchors that represent the problems or risks that slow it down. It helps to identify the pain points and the priorities of the stakeholders, as well as to generate ideas for improvement.

Prune the Product Tree

This game involves drawing a tree that represents the product or the system and adding leaves that represent the features or functions. It helps to visualize the scope and the structure of the product or the system, as well as to prioritize and prune the features or functions.

Benefits of Using Collaborative Games Technique

They create a fun, engaging, and inclusive atmosphere where everyone’s input is valued equally.
They break down barriers and silos between different roles, backgrounds, and perspectives.
They stimulate creative and divergent thinking to provide out-of-the-box and new solutions for problems by introducing playful elements and scenarios.
They encourage constructive communication and feedback among participants.
They are visual and tactile, which enhances understanding and retention of information.
They are flexible and adaptable, which can suit different situations and objectives.
They reveal hidden insights, assumptions, and preferences that might not surface in other methods.
They support collective intelligence and learning by leveraging the diverse skills and knowledge of the group.

Limitations of Using Collaborative Technique

They require careful planning and facilitation to ensure that the games are relevant, clear, and effective.
They may not suit every situation, context, or audience. Some stakeholders may not be comfortable or interested in playing games.
They may not produce reliable or valid results if the games are not aligned with the project objectives and scope.
They may not capture the complexity and nuance of real-world problems and solutions.
They may not be taken seriously by some stakeholders or decision-makers who prefer more formal or traditional methods.
They can be challenging to implement in remote or virtual settings, as they rely on physical interaction and visual cues.

Real-Life Applications of Collaborative Games Technique

A software development company used Product Box to elicit user requirements for a new mobile app. The participants created boxes with catchy slogans, logos, and features that would appeal to their target customers. The boxes were then presented to each other and voted on based on their attractiveness and usefulness.
A healthcare organization used Affinity Map to elicit stakeholder needs for a new electronic health record system. The participants wrote down their needs on sticky notes and grouped them into categories such as functionality, usability, security, etc. The categories were then discussed and prioritized based on their importance and urgency.
A non-profit organization used Fishbowl to elicit feedback on a new fundraising campaign. The participants were divided into two groups: one group acted as donors who shared their opinions on the campaign while the other group acted as observers who took notes on their comments. The roles were then switched, and the notes were compared and analyzed.
A manufacturing company used Draw Toast to elicit process improvement ideas for their production line. The participants drew diagrams of how they make toast at home and identified the steps, inputs, outputs, and dependencies. The diagrams were then compared to find similarities, differences, and opportunities for improvement.
A retail company used Empathy Map to elicit customer needs for a new online store. The participants created personas of their typical customers and filled in the four quadrants with what they say, do, think, and feel when shopping online. The personas were then used to design features and functions that would meet their needs and expectations.
A consulting firm used the Innovation Game to elicit solutions for a complex problem faced by their client. The participants used various techniques such as brainstorming, voting, ranking, prioritizing, etc. to generate and evaluate ideas for solving the problem. The best ideas were then selected and presented to the client as recommendations.

Collaborative games are a fun and effective way to do business analysis. They can help elicit stakeholder requirements more engagingly and productively. By using collaborative games, collective intelligence can be leveraged while promoting creativity and building strong relationships with stakeholders along the way.

However, collaborative games also have some limitations and challenges that need to be considered and addressed. Therefore, business analysts need to carefully plan and prepare for using collaborative games, as well as combine them with other techniques and tools to ensure a comprehensive and effective elicitation process.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab your sticky notes, whiteboards, markers, and dice, and start playing!

Don’t be a bore and Spice things up with Collaborative Games

Keep watching this space for more Business Analysis Techniques.

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