Lessons learned from implementing project management games

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the principles governing successful project management serious (educational) game design and implementation by identifying lessons learned from implementing such games. This paper applied a triangulation method that qualitatively blends the perspectives of project management practitioners, game designers, and learners. The findings of this paper suggest principles of game realism, context, display, gameplay clarity, target audience, feedback, setting, debriefing, communication mode, and personalization. The main potential beneficiaries of this research include project management educators, trainers, students, training participants, and game designers. The study provides a comprehensive project management game design and implementation guideline that could help improve the quality of project management serious games. This paper is the first exploratory study to blend the perspectives of learners (students), serious game experts, and experienced project management practitioners in order to identify the key principles of delivering successful project management educational or serious games.
 

Innovation in project management education - let’s get serious!

“…Construction and engineering students learned project management by planning their project, then "challenging" the robustness of other student project plans (Misfeldt, 2015). Some serious games focus on developing specific project management learning outcomes like requirements management (Seager, et al, 2011), project management decision-making (Rumeser and Emsley, 2019a), project scheduling (Rumeser and Emsley, 2019b), and program scheduling (Rumeser and Emsley, 2018). Table 1 lists some of the more recent project management simulation games cited in the literature.…”

Using simulations in project management education – impact on awareness and ability to navigate projects in a sustainable way

“…Those participants who found the simulations complicated were however no less positive about their experience than those who didn’t. This can be compared to the findings of Rumeser and Emsley (2019a, b) which claimed that serious games can improve the decision-making performance of participants, both in less and more complex situations.…”

“…However, the study concluded that teams with more project work experience tend to improve more than teams with less experience. The authors encourage further research where broader criteria are used to measure decision making success, for example quality and sustainability (Rumeser and Emsley, 2019a, b).…”

Recognizing leadership styles through the use of a serious game

“…In the management field, serious games can also be adopted for vocational simulation for a diverse set of roles such as planning, organizing, leading and controlling. In Buzady (2017), serious games are used for the development of leadership skills; while in Rumeser and Emsley (2019), serious games are used in project management as a way to increase team cohesion and test diverse approaches to solving complex problems. They are also used to promote the development of soft skills and communication behaviors which allows its inclusion in the context of teaching and business (López et al , 2021).…”