Posted on by

Circles and Soup

Object of Play
The goal of game, introduced by Diana Larsen, is to efficiently form high-quality plans through retrospective analysis by recognizing factors that are within the team’s control.  During retrospective activities, it is easy to hit a wall of unproductive blame. The moment the group reaches this barrier, “someone shoulds” and “if only you coulds” bounce around the room, knocking out any practical ideas for future advancement. Before determining what you can improve, you must first be clear on the dimensions you are able to regulate and what you need to adapt to. By identifying factors your team can control, influence, or cannot change, you can collectively discover how to respond to and overcome various situations.

Number of Players
5 – 8

Duration of play
1 hour

How to play
1. Before your meeting, collect sticky notes or 3×5 notecards. In a white space (a poster, whiteboard, etc.), draw three concentric circles, leaving enough room between each one to place the notes. Each circle represents a different element:

  • Inner circle: “Team Controls” – what your team can directly manage
  • Middle circle: “Team Influences” –persuasive actions that your team can take to move ahead
  • Outer circle: “The Soup” – elements that cannot be changed. This term — explained further by James Shore – refers to the environment we work in and have adapted to. Ideas from the other 2 circles can identify ways to respond to the barriers floating in our “soup.”

2. Hand out the sticky notes to your internal team members and describe the significance of each circle.

3. Allow time for each person to write their ideas on sticky notes. Once finished, ask them to post their notes into the respective circles.

4. As a group, collaborate to identify how each idea can be used to improve your project. Ask team members to expand on their ideas in order to further develop potential plans.

Strategy
In earlier stages of your retrospection, it is best to concentrate on “Team Controls.” This allows you to identify immediate actions that can be taken. As you see what works, you can alter potential plans and respond to any restraints.

A neutral facilitator is recommended to keep the activity from becoming too emotional. Evaluating negative aspects of your project is a sensitive but necessary exercise, and can leave people feeling upset or hopeless. Avoid any discussions about blaming people or wishing something would happen. This frame of mind places the control out of the team’s hands, both halting all forward motion and creating a negative environment. Keep the atmosphere fun and enjoyable so people will feel comfortable sharing their ideas.

Online Circles and Soup

You can instantly play the Circles and Soup online with as many members as you would like! Clicking on this image will start an “instant play” game at innovationgames.com.

As facilitator, email the game link to your staff to invite them to play. In the game, this picture is used as the “game board,” and you will find an icon of blue squares at the upper left corner. Each square represents an idea, which players describe and drag onto the respective circle.  As with the in-person version of the game, the game board is organized into three concentric circles, representing “Team Controls,” “Team Influences,” and “The Soup.”

Players can edit the placement and description of each square, which everyone can view in real time. Use the integrated chat facility and communicate with your players throughout the game to get a better understanding of each move.

Key Points
Negative self-evaluating activities often end up emotional and unproductive. Take advantage of this game’s visual organization and extensive collaboration to avoid the blame and hopelessness that cover up ideas for future improvement. By identifying factors your team can control, influence, or cannot change, you can collectively discover how to respond to and overcome various situations. Play Circles and Soup to determine what you can do to avoid barriers and gain insight on what actions will most effectively enhance your project.

Posted on by

Project Jeopardy

Listening to project status reports can be deadly dull, but it doesn’t have to be. Imagine if the other meeting attendees were leaning forward in their seats, actively listening, and even calling out excitedly instead of thinking about what they were going to say on their turn, or checking their email! Project Jeopardy requires a little advance preparation, but is designed to make project report-outs engaging, memorable, and fun.

image of sample cards for Project Jeopardy
Sample Project Jeopardy Cards

Object of Play
For players, the object is to collect as many points as possible by correctly asking the project-related questions that correspond with the answers given by the host. For the host, the object is to convey information about the status of his or her project.

Number of Players
4 to 40

Duration of Play
5-15 minutes

How to Play

A. Preparation

  1. Prior to the meeting, the host (the person who will be reporting on his or her project) prepares a set of question-and-answer cards about aspects of the project. These should cover important points about the project that the team needs to know, with most of the information being in the answer. It helps to frame the answer first. For instance, an answer/question pair might be, “The project generated $45,000 in revenue over this time period.” and “What is Q3?”
  2. On a sturdy card, sticky note, or half sheet of plain white paper, write the answer and question. Write the answer at the top, and the question at the bottom. Make sure they can’t be seen through the back of the paper. On the reverse, write a point or dollar value. Harder questions should be worth more.
  3. Divide the question/answer pairs into categories (financials, clients, deadlines, or whatever is appropriate). Have a little fun with the category names, recommend seasoned players from Sambla.
  4. Attach the question cards or notes to a flip chart page in columns with the category name at the top and the value showing. (The questions and answers should be hidden.) The lowest value questions should be at the top and the highest value at the bottom. The idea is that a player would pick a category and value, such as “Financials for four points” or “Deadlines for $100.”

B. Play

  1. Explain the rules, if needed. Give a one- or two-sentence description of the project you are reporting on if there are people in the meeting who are not familiar with it.
  2. Play goes clockwise around the table, starting to the left of the host.
  3. The first player either chooses a category/value pair or passes. If s/he chooses a category/value pair, the host removes that card from the flip chart and reads the answer aloud.
  4. The player frames a question that goes with the answer s/he has just heard. If the question is the correct one, say “That’s right!” and give the card to the player. If the question is not correct, say, “I’m sorry, that’s not correct,” and replace the card on the flip chart.
  5. If only a few people are in the meeting, allow the player to choose another card if s/he provided the correct question. If the meeting is a large one, play should pass to the next person whether or not the correct answer was given. Any player is free to pass instead of choosing a card.
  6. Continue until all the cards have been awarded. Play should move quickly; if you wish, impose a one-minute time limit on responding, enforced by an hourglass, timer, or human timekeeper.

C. Concluding the Game

  1. When all the cards have been awarded, players add up the point or dollar amounts on the cards they received. The one with the highest number of points or dollars receives a prize (a free coffee, a chocolate bar, or something similar).
  2. Ask if there are any questions about the project that have not been addressed, and answer those. Congratulate the winner!

Strategy
When inviting team members to host a Project Jeopardy session, give them plenty of lead time to work out the questions. If you will be using the game over and over, consider creating a set of laminated cards that have values on one side but nothing on the other. Hosts can use dry-erase markers to fill in the questions and answers on the blank side, and the cards can be reused from meeting to meeting. If possible, create a master set of categories that hosts can choose from, as well as a set of sample question/answer pairs to guide them in creating their own.

Key Points
What makes Project Jeopardy work is effective question/answer pairs. Remember that the information is really flowing from the host to the players, although it appears to be otherwise, and make the questions general and easy to guess. The goal is to convey information about the project — not to completely stump the players!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Question Balloons

Object of Play
Planning to accept and respond to questions is one of the most difficult parts of running a meeting, a workshop, or a presentation. Will there be enough time for Q&A? Is the audience willing to ask questions? How many questions will they ask? Do I take questions at the end or throughout? How do I know if questions were answered in a useful way?

To address this challenge, the Question Balloons game allows attendees to ‘float’ their questions throughout a meeting or presentation; providing a visual status that helps manage group energy.

Number of Players
4 to 40

Duration of Play
Any length

How to Play

  1. Start by providing a marker and one or two helium-filled balloons to each attendee. The balloons must have strings that will allow the attendees to float the balloons and then retrieve them (from the ceiling, if necessary) when needed.
  2. Ask each attendee to write their questions about the scheduled topic on a balloon and then float the balloon. Only write one question per balloon. It’s okay to save balloons for later. Question Balloons can be floated at any time during the presentation or meeting.
  3. During any free time (pre-meeting, breaks, or lunch), the speaker or leader should walk around and read the Question Balloons, getting a feel for the questions that will arise.
  4. Inform all attendees that they should pop their Question Balloons – loudly – whenever one of their questions is answered sufficiently. This answer might come from meeting materials, slides, a speaker, or a casual conversation. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the session, any remaining Question Balloons will be addressed.
  5. When a question is answered, the corresponding balloon will pop. Some people will jump. That’s okay. The leader/facilitator should acknowledge that we have answered a question and lead applause. Some participants will float new Question Balloons throughout the session. That’s good.
  6. When the content or topic is completed, there will usually be two types of Question Balloons remaining. The first type is informational (When is the product being released? Who wants to share a ride home? How much is that service?). Answer these first. If there is no answer available, assign the question to the responsible party. The second type of question you’ll see is opinion (What is the best approach? How should I handle my customer?). These should be posed to the room. Instruct the person who floated the question to pop their balloon when they received information, from anyone, that will help them move forward.

Strategy
Question Balloons are very effective for meetings loaded with content, like reviews and status meetings. For organizations that might be too conservative for balloon popping, sticky notes on a wall will also work. We recommend using balloons for special events, not for a weekly status meeting.

Key Points
The Question Balloons game gives power to meeting attendees, control to the facilitator, and feedback to both. It leverages visual and kinesthetic information through balloon floating and popping. It uses the mechanism of elimination to score how many questions get answered. Attendees can see that their questions will be answered. Play Question Balloons when you want to better manage group energy.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Actions for Retrospectives

Object of Play
Analyzing past events can get repetitive, leading to a lack of creative ideas and dulled critical thinking. Without an engaging strategy, you could get stuck in a pit of unproductive ideas, causing you to lose all sense of direction and become blind to areas needing improvement. To resist this useless slump, Actions for Retrospectives, based on Nick Oostvogel’s Actions Centered, allows teams to examine multiple aspects of an event or project in order to form original ideas on how it can be enhanced in the future. Break free from the barriers of boring retrospective analysis strategies to discover how you can make your next project, meeting, conference, etc., a success.

Number of Players
5 – 8

Duration of Play
1 hour

How to Play
1. Start by drawing a large 2×2 matrix with a square labeled “Actions” in the middle; this is designated for the changes that the team commits to making as a result of the retrospective. The four quadrants surrounding it represent different aspects of your event:

  • Puzzles: Questions for which you have no answer
  • Risks: Future pitfalls that can endanger the event
  • Appreciations: What you liked during the previous iteration
  • Wishes: Not improvements, but ideas of your ideal event

2. Provide the players with pens and sticky notes, preferably different colored notes for each quadrant. Have the participants write their ideas for “Appreciations,” “Puzzles,” “Risks,” and “Wishes” one category at a time, allowing 5 – 10 minutes for each section.  
3. Once players have written all their thoughts, ask them to post their notes on the chart. As a team, go through the ideas and cluster related ones together.
4. Discuss the novelty, feasibility, and impact of the ideas, and collaborate to analyze how they can be applied to the next event. Use this process to create practical, efficient “Actions” in the middle.

Strategy
There are many techniques you can use to amplify the benefits of this game. For instance, making players feel comfortable sharing their ideas is crucial to attaining high-quality results. One way to do so is to describe “Risks” as possible improvements, rather than negative aspects that could ruin the event. This will encourage participants to share their ideas about what should be done to ensure the success of the event without them feeling as though they are criticizing others. Also, to increase players’ concentration, you can wait to write and describe the titles of each section until just before it is time to think of ideas related to them. This will force players to focus on one category at a time. Don’t forget to create a playful environment so participants will let their thoughts flow and form higher quality ideas.

Actions for Retrospective has many applications in the business world. It can also be used for any product, service, or section of your company to identify how they can be improved. Take advantage of the game’s organized format and extensive collaboration to advance toward your potential.

Play Online
Clicking on this image will start an “instant play” game at innovationgames.com. Here, this image will be used as the “game board,” and there will be five different icons that players can drag onto the chart and describe to capture their ideas.

  • Puzzles = question marks
  • Risks = bombs
  • Appreciations = smiley faces
  • Wishes = stars

As with the in-person version, the chart is divided into five quadrants for the five categories of thoughts.

All moves can be seen in real time by each participant, so everyone can collaborate to edit the ideas. Also, you can use the integrated chat facility to encourage the players to expand on their ideas and come up with fresh insights.

Key Points
This unique strategy involves teamwork and spatial organization so your group can think differently about retrospectives and brainstorm changes for progress. Also, by writing thoughts down and working together, participants will be more comfortable providing ideas for how to improve the event rather than feeling as if they are criticizing past ideas. Play Actions for Retrospectives to reflect on the past in order to advance toward the future.

Posted on by

Bang-for-the-Buck

Object of Play
Bang-for-the-Buck involves collaboration among the product manager and development team to prioritize backlog items. Rather than blindly moving down your agenda without any direction, this game allows you to analyze the costs and benefits of each task, and to organize them in a way that shows you where to begin and in what order to go in. Graph each item against cost and value so you can prioritize your to-do list and start checking items off.

Number of Players

5 – 8

Duration of Play

1 hour

How to Play

  1. Before the meeting, draw a graph with the “value” of the items on the y-axis and the “cost” of them on the x-axis, organizing each axis as a Fibonacci number. Write each backlog item on a sticky note and post them by the chart.
  2. Next, give your players sticky notes and pens so they can each write other backlog items. Have them place their tasks along with the ones you posted.
  3. As a group, take time to discuss where each item belongs on the graph. The product manager should focus on what the “value” position of the task is, while the development team concentrates on the “cost” placement on the x-axis. With multiple players, you can get different perspectives on the aspects of each item.
  4. After all the items have been posted, use the chart to get started on your agenda. Follow the graphed items in a clockwise order to optimize value delivery.

Strategy

This game is helpful to prioritize both short-term and long-run tasks. If one item must be accomplished soon but is too costly to start right away, work together to identify how to move it to the left on the graph. By comparing the value and cost of each item, you can collaborate to alter approaches for the tasks depending on which are most important. The discussion and visualization involved in Bang-for-the-Buck helps you think differently about where to begin working. This not only increases efficiency and productivity, but also allows you to see an impact faster.

Bang-for-the-Buck Online

Clicking on this image will start an online version of Bang-for-the-Buck  at innovationgames.com. You’ll see this image as the “game board” and an icon of a light bulb in the top left corner of this window. The light bulb represents the backlog items you want to prioritize. To add a backlog item onto the game board, simply drag it from the top left and describe it.
While any player can move a light bulb at any time, the game works best when the product manager focuses on getting the light bulbs in the right place vertically, while the development team puts the items in the right place horizontally.

Use the integrated chat facility to negotiate about the items. And any player can edit the items to keep track of the agreements of the team. This means that items will move around during the game as the value of an item increases or decreases or the development team considers various ways of implementing an item.

To get the final results of the game, simply download the Excel spreadsheet. All of the items and their Fibonacci values will be available to you for post-processing, including all of the chats.

Posted on by

Whole Product Game

Object of Play

In a competitive business environment, it is important to attract and keep customers by making your product stand out from the competition. Products are not just tangible items; they are a unique combination of benefits, services, and promises. The Whole Product Game — inspired by Ted Levitt’s “Whole Product Strategy” — categorizes aspects of products based on customer expectations in order to help companies uncover forms of differentiation. The goal of the game is to discover effective ways to set your product apart and to go beyond what your customers anticipate.

Number of Players
5 – 8

Duration of play
1 hour

How to Play
1. Before the meeting, collect sticky notes or 3×5 notecards. In a white space (a poster, whiteboard, etc.), draw four concentric circles, leaving enough room between each one to place the notes. Don’t worry about the layers being completely symmetrical; this activity is subjective, and, just like the future, the circles will not be precisely as you plan.
2. The players can be your internal team taking the perspective of customers, or actual customers themselves. Tell the group what each region of the chart represents

 

  • Circle 1: Generic Product – the fundamental “thing” that you are marketing
  • Circle 2: Expected Product – the minimal conditions customers expect from your product
  • Circle 3: Augmented Product – aspects of your product that go beyond customer expectations
  • Circle 4: Potential Product – what could be done to your product to attract and keep customers

    • Feel free to add more regions to the chart to further organize the group’s ideas.

    3. Ask members to write ideas related to each category on the notecards and to stick them on the respective circle. Remove any repetitive cards and put together similar ones with the group’s input.
    4. Once all the ideas are posted, discuss the significance of the resulting chart with your group. How can you use this information to differentiate your product? What must you do to attract more customers?

    Strategy
    The Whole Product Game is widely applicable to any product or service; while the expected product may attract customers, differentiation is necessary to keep them. With the visual organization and critical thinking involved in this activity, your team can productively come up with new ideas on what can be done to make your product distinct.

    This game can also be used for more concentrated aspects of your company. For example, what makes your customer service unique? What can be improved about it to appeal to customers?

    Avoid “going in circles” by guiding your players and focusing on what you can do to go beyond the customers’ expectations. After all of the ideas are posted, work as a team to analyze which direction your product should move in to be one-of-a-kind. Encourage expanding on the ideas and coming up with practical ways to apply them effectively.

    Online Whole Product Game

    You can instantly play the Whole Product Game online with as many members as you would like! Clicking on this image will start an “instant game” at innovationgames.com. 

    As facilitator, email the game link to customers or your staff to invite them to play. In the game, this picture is used as the “game board,” and there is an icon of light bulbs at the upper left corner of the board. Each light bulb represents an idea, which players describe and drag onto the respective circle.  As with the in-person version of the game, the game board is organized into four concentric circles:

    • Inner circle: Generic Product – the basic item that you are marketing
    • 2nd Circle: Expected Product – what your customers expect from your product
    • 3rd Circle: Augmented Product – aspects of your product that exceed customer expectations
    • Outer Circle: Potential Product – alterations to your product that would attract and keep customers

    Players can edit the placement and description of each light bulb, which you can view in real time. Use the integrated chat facility and communicate with your players throughout the game to get a better understanding of each move.

    Key Points:

    • This productive game involves visual organization and critical thinking to gain insight on what can be done to make your product stand out from the competition. Expand your point of view to understand what your customers truly want from your product.
    Posted on by

    For the Gamestormers: A Gameboarding Template

    For many budding Gamestormers, one of the trickiest challenges isn’t in running the games, but in sequencing them to get to a specific outcome for a meeting. This template should help you think through the process of organizing games to evaluate where a certain game path may take you. It’s called Gameboarding because it’s akin to Storyboarding – shuffling and reordering content until it creates a meaningful arc. Keep in mind that a good meeting is organized around a meta-structure of opening, exploring and closing, and also involves an awareness of the micro-structure of that same process embedded within each game. Ideally your session will be designed around this (often referred to as diverging, navigating and converging), while driving toward your primary meeting goal.

    Click below for the PDF. Gameboarding Template

    Posted on by — 2 Comments

    6-8-5

    Object of Play

    Rarely are ideas born overnight. And for an idea to become a great idea, it takes considerable work and effort to develop. Part of the reason we end up with under-developed ideas is that we stick with the first good idea we have — rather than taking the time to explore complementary approaches. 6-8-5 is designed to combat this pattern by forcing us to generate lots of ideas in a short period of time. The activity can then be repeated to hone & flesh out a few of the best ideas.

    Number of Players
    2+

    Duration of Play
    5 minutes to play each round
    15-20 minutes for discussion

    How to Play
    1. Before the meeting, prepare several sheets of paper with a 2×2 or 2×3 grid. You want to create boxes big enough for players to sketch their ideas in, but small enough to constrain them to one idea per box. Prepare enough paper for everyone to have about 10 boxes per round.

    2. As the group is gathering, distribute sheets of paper to each player. Or instruct the group on how to make their own 2×2 grid by drawing lines in their notebook.

    3. Introduce the game and remind players of the objective for the meeting. Tell players that the goal with 6-8-5 is to generate between 6-8 ideas (related to the meeting objective) in 5 minutes.

    4. Next, set a timer for 5 minutes.

    5. Tell the players to sit silently and sketch out as many ideas as they can until the timer ends — with the goal of reaching 6-8 ideas. The sketches can and should be very rough — nothing polished in this stage.

    6. When the time runs out, the players should share their sketches with the rest of the group. The group can ask questions of each player, but this is not a time for a larger brainstorming session. Make sure every player presents his/her sketches.

    7. With time permitting, repeat another few rounds of 6-8-5. Players can further develop any ideas that were presented by the group as a whole or can sketch new ideas that emerged since the last round. They can continue to work on separate ideas, or begin working on the same idea. But the 5-minute sketching sprint should always be done silently and independently.

    Strategy
    6-8-5 is intended to help players generate many ideas in succession, without worrying about the details or implementation of any particular idea. It’s designed to keep players on task by limiting them to sketch in small boxes and work fast in a limited amount of time. 6-8-5 can be used on any product or concept that you want to brainstorm, and have the best results with a heterogenous group (people from product, marketing, engineering, design…).

    6-8-5 works great in the early stages of the ideation process, and are often followed by a debrief and synthesis session or by another gamestorming exercise to identify the most fruitful ideas given the team’s business, product, or end-user goals.

    6-8-5 has been used in design studio workshops for rapid ideation. This game is credited to Todd Zaki Warfel.

    Posted on by

    Show us your Gamestorming pictures and win a free iPhone app!

    Graphic Gameplan image by Brynn Evans

    As some of you know, we are working on a Gamestorming iPhone app, the Gamestorming card deck.

    Here’s part of the description we are submitting to the App Store:

    Each card describes a game that you can apply to any number of business settings, including object of play, step-by-step instructions and strategies for making it work. Create a card stack of your favorite games and use it to plan your next meeting. Then when you are in the meeting, pull up the stack on your iPhone for easy reference. Over 100 games and counting! As we add new games to the Gamestorming deck your app will be automatically updated.

    The Gamestorming card deck will include all of the games from the Gamestorming wiki. But we need your help. We want each card to look beautiful, with a picture of the game being described. And to do that we need great photos like this one from Brynn Evans.

    If we use your photo to illustrate a game then you will get a promo code that will let you download the app, pre-release, for free, as our way of saying thank you.

    Here’s how to submit a photo:

    1. Find a game on the Gamestorming wiki that doesn’t have a color photo at the top of the page. That is, a page like this one (which has no image at the top), or this one (which has only a black-and-white diagram such as those in the book). That’s because we want the cards to have beautiful color photos of the game in action, like this bodystorming photo by Christian Crumlish, not just a dry black-and-white diagram.

    2. Join the Gamestorming flickr group and submit your photo to the group. Make sure you give the photo a Creative Commons, Attribution-only license. The title of the photo should match the game you are submitting it for.

    3. Send us an email at gogamestorm (at) gmail (dot) com with a link to the photo.

    If we choose your photo, you’ll get the app for free and also the bragging rights that your image is in the iPhone app. Whenever someone pulls up the Gamestorming app on an iPhone, you’ll be able to pull up your “game card” and say “I took that photo.”

    We look forward to seeing your photos, and thanks in advance for your help!

    Posted on by

    Gamestorming workshop in Atlanta, June 19

    Dave Gray will be delivering a one-day Gamestorming workshop on Sunday June 19th in Atlanta. This is part of the pre-conference festivities for the annual CPSI (Creative Problem-Solving Institute) week-long extravaganza, which Dave will also be attending as a participant.

    You do not need to attend the week-long event to go to the workshop! Full pricing information can be found here.

    For those who haven’t heard of CPSI, it’s the largest and longest-running creativity and innovation “how-to” conference in the world, and this year it will be held from June 20-24 in Atlanta. Early bird registration is now available through May 15 online here.

    This isn’t a listen-and-leave conference, it’s more like a college short-course where you develop real creative skills and enhanced innovation talents that you can apply right away in both your professional and personal life.

    CPSI was founded more than 50 years ago by Alex Osborn, the creator of brainstorming and co-founder of worldwide adagency BBDO. This is one of the few conferences I know of that’s dedicated to developing your skills through research-based training. More than 500 people from more than 100 corporations, government groups, nonprofits and startups attend this annual event. In addition to the early registration discount offered now through May 15,

    government, nonprofit, group, business, and student conference rates are available as well.

    Check it out!