Category Archives: Gameful Project Management

This series will be about Gameful Project Management, which is based on the Self-Gamication approach, bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification together.

GPM and the Synergy of Three

Gameful Project Management
Reading time: 3 minutes

Often, the name of a concept does not give away everything it is about. The same applies to Gameful Project Management (GPM). As gamification itself, it is much more than just adding “points, badges, and leaderboards”* to your operational processes and reporting systems.

Self-gamification as a source

While developing this content for project managers, I will lean on the approach I call Self-Gamification, which is an art of turning any- and everything in our lives into games.

The Self-Gamification approach embraces three well-established and known techniques and methods, which can also be described as philosophies.

These are:

  • anthropology,
  • kaizen, and
  • gamification.

Gameful Project Management also takes roots in these three approaches.

Three approaches embraced by self-gamification and gameful project management

Anthropology, as it stands today, is about the non-judgmental study of cultures. And the same can be done on a personal level. You can study yourself as a culture of one person; you.**

Kaizen embraces breaking anything into small, effortlessly manageable bits. That can be a challenge, the path to reach our goals, or even rewards we give ourselves or others for making those small steps.***

Gamification is about bringing the best of what games give us into real-life situations. It is about bringing the fun factor in what we do besides games. It is also about willing to see what we do in our “regular” lives as games, any project, and any activity.****

Tapping into the synergy of three

Later in this blog series, I will share more on each of these approaches plus refer to the work by those from whom I learned about them.

I will also address the reasons, why I think these three approaches work so well together.

But here is a little summary. Together, all three approaches, methods, and philosophies create a fantastic synergy. It has its foundation in awareness, progresses one brick at a time, to finally built a beautiful and fun house that we would enjoy to be in. It is about being both the designers and the players of what we do, regardless whether we think we want, need or have to do that.

References:

* Yu-kai Chou, Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards

** “Practice your anthropological approach. Pretend you’re a scientist observing a culture of one — yourself. The trick is not to judge what you see, but to neutrally observe how you function, including your thought processes. Awareness and kindness are key.” — Ariel and Shya Kane, How to Have A Match Made in Heaven: A Transformational Approach to Dating, Relating, and Marriage

*** Robert Maurer, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, and The Spirit of Kaizen: Creating Lasting Excellence One Small Step at a Time

**** A great example of resources on how to facilitate and achieve gameful thinking is Game Thinking: Innovate Smarter & Drive Deep Engagement with Design Techniques from Hit Games, by Amy Jo Kim

If you want to learn more

If you would like to learn more about Gameful Project Management, then I invite you to follow the articles in this series and for that to subscribe to the Optimist Writer’s Blog. You can sign up here.

If you would like to work closely with me, and optimize your project management practices gamefully (= in a light, creative, and inexpensive way), then check out my coaching and consulting services on Gameful Project Management as well as Gameful Writing here.

If you want to learn more about the approach that lies at the base of the gameful project management — self-gamification — then check out my book Self-Gamification Happiness Formula.

For the list of all resources, I offer on self-gamification go to this link.

Gameful Project Management: A New Blog Series and Why I Want To Write It

Gameful Project Management, , , , , ,

Reading time: 5 minutes

I turn all aspects of my life into games for several years now. The resonance and interest in what I do inspire me to create various types of content, which I created to share my experiences. The latest was the book Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games.

I am thrilled about the positive feedback and interest to the book and the Self-Gamification approach.

Many of my readers are project managers

In my interaction with my readers, I realized that many of them are entrepreneurs or persons in management positions. So, their questions were centered often around turning project management into games. Also, besides work, many questions were about how to handle what we want or need to do balancing it with enough time for our loved ones, our friends, and ourselves.

While answering questions, I shared my process of turning various parts of my life and how I finally turned my whole life into games. I also shared my self-motivational game designs. When looking closer at my latest gamified design that I call the Balance Game, it becomes clear that it is the design of a “project management game,” embracing both my work and personal life.

The interest in Self-Gamification Happiness Formula resulted in several requests for me to lead seminars and make presentations on Self-Gamification. Also, these requests seemed to come down to this one question: how to make juggling all the responsibilities that we have, not only functioning well but also enjoyable? This last possibility which I show in my approach to turning our lives into games was one of the main pulling forces to what I had to say.

Searching for resources on the Gameful Project Management

Since I am not the first to talk about making our own lives gameful or playful, I expected to find many resources on this topic. But surprisingly when I searched for the words “gameful project management” on Amazon, I got the following reply: “Use fewer keywords or try these instead -> No results for gameful project management.”

A bit further down below this statement, there were a few suggestions for books on how to manage game or gaming projects. That is an entirely different topic altogether, but I downloaded a sample of some of them anyway. I am sure I will learn something new, exciting, and valuable there.

So I typed “playful project management” and got a few entries with books among many creatively designed monthly or weekly planners. The books are about how playful attitude can enrich the workplace and various activities in embraces, including project management. Thus I downloaded the samples of these books as well, and I will read them as I write this series (more on it further below).

But playful project management is not what I am looking for. Projects resemble more games than play. They are structured very much as games, containing goals, rules, reporting/feedback system. And their documentation, and especially the contracts, often contain signatures of all parties involved sealing their voluntary participation. This voluntary participation confirms their will to be part of this “project game,” as well as their right to step out of the project (leave the game).
When I turned to the internet and started the same search, I found a few articles addressing gamification of business processes and many tools to facilitate project management. But again, I couldn’t find anything explicitly discussing how gameful approach can enrich and facilitate project management.

But I believe it can.

I am aware that many consider project management activities tedious, time-consuming, at times expensive, and annoying, even if necessary. I did that, until — while adjusting my self-gamification game designs for the next round — I realized that these plans were nothing else than my project management plans. Without me intending it, project and time management became effortless and fun.

After the research on Amazon and on the internet, I wanted to be sure that I didn’t miss anything in my research on gameful project management. So I went to Udemy.com, where you can find many great online courses both on project management and gamification. But again, there was nothing explicitly targeted to show how these two can work together and what else is needed to make project management gamification a success.

So all these are the reasons why I am starting a blog series on Gameful Project Management, which I will also release as a book and an online course.

What it is and is not about

Here are the tentative title and subtitle of this multi-dimensional project:

  • Title: Gameful Project Management
  • Sub-title: Low-Budget, Effortless, Enlightening, and Fun Optimization of All Facets of Your Project Management

I can imagine that the words “low-budget,” “effortless,” “enlightening,” and “fun” sound strange together, but this is precisely how the management of your projects and your time can become when you turn them into exciting games and treat yourself as if you were both the designer and the player of your project management games.

This blog series will not suggest that you buy a new software system or hire new personnel. Instead, it will concentrate on how you can improve your project management activities with what you already have at your disposal and with little additional effort. With self-gamified attitude toward project management, you will become aware of what you need for your work (and even life in general) and make conscious decisions on what to do next. You will also acquire skills of gameful resourcefulness and motivation in any of the situations, including tight deadlines when increased motivation is hard to achieve but often needed.

I will share with you how you can turn the project management into not only a productive activity but also into a fun one. By applying the ideas shared in this blog series, you will see a considerable improvement in project management efficiency without making significant investments into new technology or more personnel.

If you want to learn more

If you would like to learn more about Gameful Project Management, then I invite you to follow the articles in this series and for that to subscribe to the Optimist Writer’s Blog. You can sign up here.

If you would like to work closely with me and discover how you can optimize your project management practices gamefully (= in a light, creative, and inexpensive way) the check out my coaching and consulting services on Gameful Project Management here.

If you want to learn more about the approach that lies at the base of the gameful project management — self-gamification — then check out my book Self-Gamification Happiness Formula.

For the list of all resources, I offer on self-gamification go to this link.