Gamifying Agile Adoption – An Experiment – Part 1

Gamification is now in place for over two and a half months at IDeaS and the data is looking better.

Iteration Burn Down

The game was introduced on the second day of Iteration 8. The iteration burn down data started looking better since then. Stories got planned well, they started getting accepted earlier in the iteration. Iteration 11 and 12 data is not looking as good because of holidays and 5th ShipIt day that was scheduled on 1st two days of iteration 12.

Velocity Chart

Velocity Chart is also showing better data starting iteration 8. In-iteration story acceptance has increased. Due to holidays, the velocity data is not up to the mark for iteration 11 and 12.

 

Behavioral Changes

We saw some interesting behavioral changes

• The team members started following processes well.
• There was more interaction and collaboration between SD, QA, Product Owners and Product Managers.
• The negative points started bothering the team members and they became a bit risk averse.
• Some members started pushing product owners and product managers for early story acceptance to get additional bonus stars at the cost of quality.

Enhancements to the game

• Now -ve stars do not impacts the total stars that are already credited. -ve stars give you Devil Badges.
• Earlier “Badges” is now called as “Levels”.
• Introduced “Badges” –
  • Badges give specific feedback on the contributions done in a specific area.
  • Different departments can have different badges.
    • Badges have three levels
      • Bronze
      • Silver
      • Gold
    • Different badges can have different star count to reach a level within the badge.
  • There are Angel and Devil badges.
    • The goal is to earn Angel badges.
    • Devil badges represents activities that one should not be performing.
  • 
• Leader Board now has a left panel that shows Badge Leader board.
  • 
• Self User Profile
  • Clicking on the user name on the right top corner brings the user on the User Profile page. The user profile page also two sections
    • Left Panel shows
      • User section
        • Total number of stars earned so far.
        • All the badges earned by the user. The color represents the badge level.
        • Appreciate someone by clicking on thumbs up icon.
        • Create new mission by clicking on the bulls eye icon.
      • Department Section
        • List all the users in the department in descending order of the number of stars received.
        • Appreciate the individual using the thumbs up icon.
    • Right Panel
      • Accordion shows all the badges that the user has received.
      • Progress bar shows the number of stars received for a given badge and the number of stars to achieve to reach to the next level of the badge.
      • Photos
        • The middle photo is of the self user.
        • The left hand side photo represents the user who is just ahead of the self user.
        • The right hand side photo represents the user who is just behind the self user.
  • 
• User Details
  • Click on any image on any screen and you would land up on the user details screen. The screen shows all the badges earned by the particular user.
  • Hover on the badge and you will see the reason why the user received stars for the concerned badge.
  • 

IDeaS Rock Stars is now opensource!!!

You can now download IDeaS Rock Star application war and use it in your organization. The source code and configuration help is available at Github.

Download Bots

• Jenkins Plugin
• Rally Plugin