Games can help software teams create a collaborative, joyful, and fun experience in which they play to solve complex problems. According to Jakub Perlak, people can play games that have a meaningful purpose, and have fun in doing so. Games create space for intentional cognitive activity which supports software development in solving complex problems or when learning something new or adapting to changes that are important for agility.
Jakub Perlak gave a keynote about learning agility through games at ScanAgile 2023.
In games, we play with our imagination and we experience situations in an environment which is safe for trying and experimenting with something new, without high risk, Perlak said. During games, we boost our creativity. Perlak quoted Stuart Brown: "Nothing fires up the brain like play".
If we think about agility as the ability to respond to changes, games can help us experience how to navigate ambiguous, uncertain, and even complex situations, as Perlak explained:
You as a participant sometimes don’t have full instructions (sometimes by intention of the game’s designer) and you don’t know what will happen with people who you are probably meeting for the first time.
To create a space for intentional cognitive activity, we need to start with safety. It can be in the form of a light contract among participants, either verbal or written, as Perlak explained:
Usually, I put up a slide during the games that emphasizes voluntary participation and the ability to opt out of the games at any phase, emphasizing that the most important part of the experience is feeling good and ready to share ourselves as we are.
An essential aspect of learning is making sense of shared activity and its purpose, Perlak said. We play games that have a meaningful purpose, and fun should be a very welcomed ingredient. As an example, Perlak explained the rules of the agile airplanes game in which participants build paper planes, emphasizing its interactive and incremental nature.
Debriefing the experience within the group allows participants to share lessons learnt and insights, Perlak said. Additionally, it is great to have time for linking their thoughts and feelings to real work scenarios, he added.
Perlak mentioned that even if you are part of a long-lived team, a new situation triggered by the game can reveal something new about the team that you didn’t know before. He gave the example of the non-musical chairs game, which is a simulation that exposes the group’s ability to communicate and experiment. Finding a solution in the simulation can be a stress test for collaboration, even for long-lived teams.
InfoQ interviewed Jakub Perlak about learning agility through games.
InfoQ: How do games improve our learning?
Jakub Perlak: Learning can be described as making new cognitive connections and brushing up on existing ones. For example, team building games are relatively quick, fun, and easy, and can engage people in collaborative exercises and prepare them for experimentation.
InfoQ: What kinds of game formats exist and what are the benefits and challenges of these formats?
Perlak: There are plenty of formats depending on the number of players, how strict the rules are, and whether they are in physical or virtual settings. I like to differentiate games based on their format type, aligning them with where the group is in the 3-phase process.
In the opening phase, using initial enthusiasm we can work on getting people familiar with the new situation, like a "human machine" game where people are discovering how to cooperate.
More complex games are also possible, while still keeping up engagement. An example is "agile airplanes," which allows us to explore incremental and iterative approaches.
In closing, we can apply learning from previous phases. We should try to link experience to everyday life or problems that we try to solve, for example "agile bingo" in which we check what agile principles we have observed during the games.
InfoQ: When should we use games, and when should we not?
Perlak: Games are not a silver bullet for learning. I would use games when there is enough space for people to try something new together, or in order to practice a new approach while having some fun.
A small warning: creating an engaging, learning game that is simple and at the same time addresses our challenge, can be difficult. Alternatively, other formats like exercise and case studies, devoid of humor and shared activity, can serve the purpose.
Think about the decision-making process in a team; improvements can be made without a game. However, consider if the team can play a game that demonstrates how hard or easy it can be for the team to reach a decision. This shared experience can facilitate reflection much easier.