Question

In The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention, the authors mention that one creative way to boost productivity in software development is to implement "productivity games" where employees compete against each other in a way similar to gaining reputation and badges on Stack Overflow.

One example they give is the Microsoft "Vista Internal Beta 1 Game" where team members were asked to perform tasks that would get them a letter to spell "b e t a 1". They got these letters by:

b: Install a beta 1 build
e: Vote on a beta 1 build
t: Run overnight
a: Install 3 consecutive beta 1 builds
1: Run overnight 3 times

They had a website that tracked the leaderboard for each week. The authors describe the result:

The beta 2 game expanded on the concept and awarded points for test activity. There were multiple levels of prizes and random drawings, and players could earn wristbands based on participation. In some cases, the wristband became a symbol at meetings and in hallways that spurred competition.

These games culminated in a release game that was distributed company-wide. Prizes were based on random drawings for those who completed installation and certain test activities. Once again, the results were phenomenal, with the majority of the company participating in the final days of testing Windows Vista.

Has anyone implemented or participated in something similar in your company? How d it go? What went well, what didn t work out?

P.S. Please, no snarky comments about Vista as it is still the major core of Windows 7 and I think the game idea has some merit.

UPDATE: Added bounty to get more ideas. I ll accept the most interesting one after the bounty week is up. I m looking for practical ideas that could be done with a development team of 20+ people.

UPDATE 2: It looks like Facebook has a meta-game of "push karma" to determine whose commits are generally good.

Answer 1

I ve heard that some people play the Continuous Integration Game. There is even a Hudson plugin to keep score.

Answer 2

The process you re talking about is called Serious Gaming (see also SeriousGames.org), and has been used not only by Microsoft but by a number of companies and organizations to drive people to execute specific desired behaviors. The approach works well in most cases, if the following rules are followed:

Make the tasks achievable
Have a convenient and understandable leaderboard
Keep the time period short
Keep the prize(s) small (i.e. larger prizes encourage gaming the system instead of playing the game)
Have another game ready to go when this game ends

I ve participated in a number of serious games and have really enjoyed them. Keeping the prizes small is a key, so people are playing for bragging rights and not to get the brand new iPhone.

Answer 3

I ve not been involved with any such games myself, however I do recall reading an interesting article somewhere that warned of the risk of making employees feel patronised by such games.

I ll try and find the artitlce.

Answer 4

I ve not been involved in one yet but as it happens one of the companies I m looking to apply to has this really interesting link in their description: http://codingdojo.org/ - they say they do these things regularly and it seems to be exactly the kind of thing you are looking for (albeit on a possibly larger scale).

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