A collaborative game is a technique used in business analysis and played like a game where groups of participants may come together at the time of elicitation activity to bring about a common shared understanding about a problem or a solution.
The purpose of a collaborative games in business analysis is to encourage participants to collaborate to build a joint understanding of a problem or solution.
By bringing people together who have different perspectives on a topic, the group gains a better understanding and develops a shared model of the solution problem. The shared knowledge of the collaborative game stimulates the participants into having different views on a topic and work together to understand the issue and create probable solutions.
When using the collaborative games technique, it is beneficial to have a neutral facilitator to explain and enforce the rules of the game, keep the game moving forward and ensure all participants play a role in the game. Activities may include moving sticky notes, writing on whiteboards or drawing pictures. These visual and tactile activities encourage participants to overcome inhibitions, think creatively and laterally.
Collaborative games are a useful technique that business analysts can use as an ice breaker during elicitation and collaboration
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A collaborative game should have rules to keep it moving forward and may be time boxed. Most collaborative games have three steps.
- The opening step involves participants in learning the rules and generating ideas.
- The exploration step engages participants in finding connections among their ideas, testing ideas, and experimenting with new ideas.
- During the closing step ideas are assessed and participants determine which may be most useful and productive.
When the collaborative game is over the facilitator and participants determine decisions or actions to be taken based on what they learned.
Some example collaborative games include:
- Product box;
- Affinity map;
- Fishbowl;
- Draw toast;
- Empathy map;
- Innovation game.
Collaborative Games – Product Box
Product Box is one of the most useful agile games and useful in the business analysis context. Every commodity that you buy from the market is wrapped in a box/cover. This box is the primary medium for the manufacturing company to market and convince you that their product is better than the competition placed alongside.
The product box provides limited print space, that the manufacturing company has to efficiently utilise to market the product. In this game the participants build a retail store box and use it to identify some features of the box which would help fulfil any customer needs.
Once each team is finished demonstrating its product box, ask all participants to vote for the best product box excluding their own product box. The Product box with the maximum votes wins.
Collaborative Games – Affinity Map
In this collaborative game, affinity map, the participants write down features on sticky notes and group similar features together. It is used to identify similar product features. Using a simple Affinity Diagram technique can help you discover embedded patterns in your data (and sometimes break old patterns) of thinking.
It can also give us a sense of where most people’s thinking is focused. Use an affinity diagram when you want to find categories and meta-categories within a cluster of ideas and when you want to see which ideas are most common within the group.
Collaborative Games – Fishbowl
In this collaborative game, fishbowl, the participants are split into two groups. One group talks about the problem while the other groups listen and documents their comments. This game is used to identify any concealed presumptions.
Often during meetings, we bring together stakeholders who aren’t familiar with each other’s perspectives or aren’t accustomed to listening to each other without offering an immediate response. In some cases, stakeholders may even be meeting for the first time.
In scenarios like these, it’s not surprising that it can be difficult for people to engage in a rich and meaningful conversation. The Fishbowl game is an effective way to activate attention—to prime our natural listening and observing skills so that a more substantive conversation can take place.
Collaborative Games – Draw Toast
In this collaborative game, draw toast, you can use the exercise to introduce people to the concepts of visual thinking, working memory, mental models and/or systems thinking. This also works as a nice warm-up exercise to get people engaged with each other and thinking visually.
On paper or index cards, ask people to draw “How to make toast.” After a couple of minutes, ask people to share their diagrams with each other and discuss the similarities and differences.
Ask people to share any observations or insights they have about the various drawings. You are likely to hear comments about the relative simplicity or complexity of the drawings, whether they have people in them, how technical they are, how similar or different they are, and so on.
When comparing the toast diagrams, people are shocked at how diverse the diagrams are, revealing a wide range of models of what’s important in making toast. It’s a great launch pad for drawing out what’s really important to the group.
Collaborative Games – Empathy Map
In this collaborative game, empathy map, is a method for understanding audiences, including users, customers, and other players in any business ecosystem.
Empathy map has become more popular because of the Business Model Canvas. The aim of the empathy map game is to gain a deeper level of understanding of a stakeholder in your business ecosystem, which may be typically be an end customer in the context of a value proposition or an experience using a product or service.
The exercise can be as simple or complex as you want to make it. You should be able to make a rough empathy map in about 30 minutes, provided you have a reasonable understanding of the customer and context you want to map. The empathy mapping exercise can help you identify gaps in your understanding and help you gain a deeper understanding of the things you don’t yet know.
Collaborative Games – Innovation Game
In this collaborative game, innovation game, developed by Luke Hohmann where customers play a set of directed games as a means of generating feedback about a product or service. The research is primary because the data collected is gathered directly from customers or prospects and is intended to answer a specific research question.
Customers who play innovation games are commonly direct recipients or consumers of a specific product or service.
In some cases, though, game players may be any person or system who is or would be affected by a product or service.
Collaborative Games – Strengths & Limitations
Collaborative Games Strengths
- Hidden assumptions or differing opinions may be revealed
- Creative thinking is stimulated Usually quiet team members may take an active role in the activity
- Exposure of business needs that aren’t being met
Collaborative Games Limitations
- Games could seem silly making reserved participants uncomfortable
- Time-consuming games may seem unproductive if objectives are unclear
- Since a conclusion is reached by the group, there may be a false sense of confidence