Developing the Impediments Game – An Interlude
I know what you’re probably thinking by now: MORE on this silly game? Well, yes (I’m so embarrassed). You see, it just gets more interesting as I continue to play with it. Today I decided that I needed to improve the impediments cards in the game. In previous iterations, the cards had the word impediment printed on one side and the impact or cost of the impediment was printed on the other side. I thought it would make the impediments much more interesting if I used some real world examples. So, using the list of 100 impediments that was compiled by William Wake, I added an impediment description to each card. Now they look something like this:
What I like about having actual examples of impediments on each card is that players now get familiarized with different kinds of impediments while they play the game. Players actually might learn about different kinds of impediments! That’s kind of a nifty idea.
You see I have a confession to make: so far the game has been a way for me to try and model my own hypothesis about how impediments and risks impact teams. For example:
Hypothesis: A team that deals with impediments will have a higher velocity than at team that doesn’t address their impediments. Hypothesis: A team that deals with Risks will have fewer impediments to deal with and subsequently higher velocity.
I confess that these are not complicated hypothesis, but they pose the kinds of assertions that I would like to validate. It turns out that constructing a game with rules that define the boundaries of the problem is a really fun and engaging way to test the validity of those assertions. But as I build out the game further, I’m starting to realize that games can also have learning objectives as well. Perhaps I ought to define some of those. For example:
People who play this game will learn about different kinds of impediments – some that they may not have ever considered before
Well, that sounds like a pretty good thing to me!
So now I’m thinking about the game a little differently. I’m looking at the games not only validating my own hypothesis about how impediments and the way we manage them (or fail to) impacts teams, but also providing a tool for teaching others about what impediments are and how they work. I think more people should create games!