3 Ways to Add Gamification to Project Management Life Cycle

Businesses have a lot of riding on the success of their project management endeavors. It’s important to have people in the right places and operating proficiently enough where companies are capable of executing even the most rigorous challenges with the best outcomes possible. This requires that corporations have the best leader at the head of a group while everyone on the team is capable of handling the tasks assigned to them. Beyond just these basics, though, it’s necessary for project management life cycle to take motivation and engagement opportunities into account.
The greatest method for achieving positive results is to create a workplace where people are excited and driven to get things done. Adding benchmark rewards and creating stratification in the different levels and quality of completion a task can achieve helps encourage people to do more and strive for better outcomes. This is called gamification and it can provide incentives of all kinds for meeting specific goals.
It’s not as simple as handing out rewards or giving people tasks and hoping things will turn out okay. Businesses have to ensure that they are creating environments that can support the best in enterprise productivity and performance, which can rely on a number of factors. Here are the three big things to look for when combining gamification with project management.
1.) Set clear guidelines
When people understand what’s expected of them, they’re more likely to hit intended goals and provide positive performances. At the same time, having an idea of the expectations and job requirements set before them allows employees to feel confident and in control of their tasks. What’s more, the presence of clear guidelines ensures that staff are not confused about how to meet project management gamification demands and can more easily earn these rewards.
2.) Give people what they want
There are two different areas where companies should be making certain that they’re offering their staff members the kinds of rewards they want. The first is in terms of whether or not the bonuses provided for successfully meeting challenges is comparable to the amount of effort applied. This has to do with the value and variety of bonus applied when certain guidelines are met.
The other has to do with the way in which these programs are delivered. As The Wall Street Journal reported, a recent ClickSoftware seminar with Gil Bouhnick touched on the intricacies and challenges for creating the right outlets for proper incentivization. He noted that the hardware and platforms necessary to make gamification work in the enterprise environment must be those with which employees are already comfortable. It’s also wise to employ resources that staff members already own, thereby furthering adoption and lowering deployment costs.
“The use of gaming techniques to reward enterprise mobile users in a non-game setting has big benefit potential, namely to drive improved efficiencies in the field and deliver superior customer service,” Bouhnick said regarding the best delivery strategies for business. “Specifically for service organizations, gamificiation has power to engage and excite a workforce, increase productivity and improve service delivery with game tactics.”
3.) Make it fun
People work hard in order to meet goals and earn rewards that they really want. While it’s great to offer these tools in a way that’s easy to distribute and targets the best kinds of incentives for really motivating workers, it’s also necessary to ensure that people want to be working toward these rewards. That’s why companies should also find ways of making gamification fun.
According to Forbes contributor Wharton, adding games into the incentive compensation scenario helps reduce reticence in adopting these kinds of programs. These kinds of opportunities need to be engaging and immersive, thereby offering employees the opportunity to increase their interest in these kinds of strategies without losing out on effectiveness of organic engagement. Helping work business goals right into the project management life cycle can help employees strive for the best kind of outcomes without losing the effectiveness of the team. Though everyone is working toward individual goals, gamification can bring everyone together in a fun and appealing landscape.