Cognizant 20-20 Insights

Using Gamication to Build a Passionate and Quality-Driven Software Development Team

Applying game design techniques can increase software quality and motivate employees to improve the complex software development process across the lifecycle.
Executive Summary
More than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamied application and 50% of companies that manage innovation and research will use gamication to drive innovation by 2015, according to Gartner research.1 If so, this means gamication has transcended buzzword status and has moved into the mainstream of corporate computing. But what is gamication? In simple terms, it is a fun, outcome-based process of employing game elements and techniques to engage employees, reward and recognize individuals and keep people motivated to achieve end results. Gamication is evolving, however, and in many pundits minds will play a key role in managing innovation both internal and external for many organizations. The reason? Organizations are challenged to effectively engage employees and customers to achieve basic business goals. Using points, levels, rewards, badges, etc. to incent performance and honor accomplishments, is seen as a powerful 21st century way of stoking the competitive nature of human beings particularly millennials who have grown up in a digital world where gaming is often the rule not the exception. To properly leverage gamication, organizations must rst understand basic game mechanics that successfully engage employees. For starters, many of these concepts can be applied in non-gaming situations throughout the companys business model. For companies starting to gamify activities, the rst design point is to identify ways to motivate participants to achieve key goals and those goals should align with the companys business objectives. For starters, we suggest gamifying project management, innovation, the softwaredevelopment training process and delivery. Gamication can start with internal as well as external initiatives. Internal gamication processes are aimed at keeping employees greatly satised and excelling in creating quality work products. External gamication is aimed at maintaining a happy customer base and in turn achieving business goals. This white paper discusses the process and framework of gamication and proposes an approach for applying game mechanics and dynamics in software development and delivery models. It looks at why gamication is necessary, examines realistic processes to be followed on

cognizant 20-20 insights | february 2014

the ground and identies the key benets to be reaped, supported by case studies from projects we have implemented. We will also explain how game design techniques can be used in non-gaming environments that not only engage and motivate employees, but also improve customer satisfaction and engagement, gleaned from our client interactions.

Why Gamication?
Most organizations are challenged to understand business initiatives or employee behavior changes that can affect the achievement of long- and/or short-term goals. Moreover, gaming techniques, although in vogue as a result of the digital revolution, are not really new. In fact, many organizations already have reward systems to recognize their employees work (i.e., Employee of the Month/Year) and thereby increase employee engagement and motivation levels. Once the basic denitions are understood, organization need to ask the following questions:

In the traditional feedback cycle, employees often wait a year for their performance to be recognized by management. By changing existing protocols and processes, organizations can enable fast and meaningful feedback, accelerating employee growth and learning. This is important for organizations seeking to build or extend momentum. Sadly, in many businesses short-term goals are unclear, particularly as the business environment evolves, making change inevitable. Moreover, rules often lack transparency; rewards and recognition are rarely given to participants who excel across functional areas throughout the year. Long-term goals are often more focused, but companies need to work to establish small wins, intermediate milestones and a drive to master new skills to keep employees motivated and contributing business value. To extend competitive advantage, they need systems to enable employees to earn rewards and respect within their peer groups, as well as to validate their skills and the abilities of others. The key is to create competition in a scalable, automated way that can be used to drive repeatable results. Driving competition, collaboration, networking and knowledge-sharing among employees is critical to achieving long-term organizational goals.

What are the problem areas? Why should we invest in gamication? How can business use gamication to engage,

foster collaboration among and motivate employees?

Gamication: What Is It?

gamification = gam(e) + -ification

applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make

them more fun and engaging

Games (Serious) Games Whole Toys Play

Figure 1

Gamification Partial Playful Designing

cognizant 20-20 insights

Successful software development and maintenance projects are typically advanced by collaboration, effective teamwork, active participation, enthusiasm and quality deliverables. Challenges normally arise on software quality, meeting performance benchmarks, on-time delivery with improved quality, innovation, value-adds to customers, etc. Managing employees behavior and motivation levels is yet another challenge for IT organizations. Utilizing gamication techniques as part of the software development process can assist in dealing with some of these challenges, particularly motivationally oriented ones. Gamication brings the process of applying game mechanics and dynamics into software development and the delivery model. Game mechanics, including elements such as points, scoreboards, levels and challenges, can drive developers to outperform the competition, hit personal and professional achievements, gain rewards and recognition, track progress and feedback, nd ways to express themselves and improve their motivation levels. Gamication can be implemented in many software development and maintenance activities such as on-time delivery, performance improvement, code quality, requirement management, defects xed during maintenance and knowledge management. To achieve delivery excellence, most companies have a business strategy in place. But most realize they have to go the extra mile and engage customers and employees through the power of gamicaton.

the progress, provide real-time feedback and also recognize employees whose talents distinguish their performance. The project manager should clearly identify the business problem, dene rules and goals to incorporate the game features used in work activities, reward and recognize the desired behavior, track progress and establish feedback loops to achieve the organization or project-specic business objectives. Well-designed games challenge players, encouraging them to move to various levels and unleash passion and commitment until they complete all levels. The gamication process has a framework of points, feedback, leaderboards, badges, rewards and levels for players to see their progress and compare their performance with others to achieve the organizations long-term goals (see Figure 2).

Lessons Learned
In 2012 Gartner predicted that by 2014 over 80% of current gamied processes will fail, primarily due to poor design, improper rules and poorly dened goals and reward mechanisms.2 The simplest way to overcome failure is to understand the problem better, know your audience, dene rules and establish goals representing business objectives. These steps enable gamication to be implemented in ways that educate employees about the process of playing the game and thereby achieving the organization or projectspecic business objectives.

Gamication Tools and Framework

As noted above, gamication uses game mechanics such as points, collaboration, fun, challenges, levels, Leaderboards (or scoreboards) and rewards to engage employees and drive their behavior. Game dynamics include those things that make people love games including competition, rewards, recognition, status, self-expression and altruism. By enabling reward systems and increasing game levels, organizations can continuously engage employees to achieve shortor long-term organization objectives. Organization or project teams should use a framework to facilitate the process of gamication. This means employing game designers who use various strategies and frameworks to create new games, provide more attention to dening game rules, bring out various levels to challenge employees, offer attractive reward mechanisms, etc. Gamifying business activities requires a clear and transparent process to track cognizant 20-20 insights

Gamication Tools

Goals

Ba dg

es

les Ru

ement asur Me

Gamication Tools

Rewa rds

Re F e a l- T ed im e ba ck

Lead

o erb

ar

ds

Figure 2

The Essential Elements of a Gamication Framework

Gamication Tools and Framework Description
The goals layer is where the organization or project team plans and communicates goal objectives to employees. Dene clear goals and well-dened rules of play to ensure employees feel empowered to carry out their dened objectives. Enable the process to set milestones that can be achieved in a short timespan to make regular progress. Simplify the gamication process for employees and specify the goals and rules about what they can and cannot do in the game, dene the points table to know the scores and list the game levels. Gamication focuses on business goals, rules and feedback mechanisms used by both the employees and the organization. Dene a simple set of principles that can be interpreted easily. Communicating the rules is a critical task in dening and deploying a game. Rules dene limits on players to accomplish the goals. The rewards system is a very critical part and big motivation for a project team that needs to be addressed by the manager. Employees feel very good on completion of the assigned tasks but at the same time they become motivated to achieve new rewards or awards in bigger forums. In typical game design, players know where they stand in the game and also other players status. A sense of progress is very important even if its small, as it is critical to keep employees motivated and highly engaged. Employees in an organization want to know how they are doing and expect a system in place to share feedback frequently in the areas they need to focus on. It is the organizations or project managers responsibility to track progress and communicate feedback and areas of improvement to employees in an easily digestible format. Set up a series of small wins to engage employees and keep them motivated to achieve long-term goals. We get instant feedback while we play games. Positive feedback energizes players; negative feedback enables players to focus on their improvement areas and perform better. Currently, many employees receive feedback annually; organizations should change the system to share real-time feedback frequently with employees to improve their delivery excellence. Timely feedback is essential for employees to focus on the improvement areas. During the gamication effort, the project team should determine the metrics to be tracked and update the leaderboard on a regular basis with an analysis of the metrics against benchmarks. This process helps employees to understand their progress and the work needed to achieve the dened goals. The feedback to the employees should be in real time and suggest to them if they need to change their behavior to perform the assigned tasks. The project team should dene the metrics that can be utilized during the gamication effort to see the team progress toward its goals. During the gamication process, there may be situations or events requiring a change in the dened metrics and elements. The process should be exible enough to accommodate such changes and communicate the same to employees. The organization faces a challenge in identifying employees strengths and expertise. This is crucial for the organization in order to achieve the long-term goals by assembling great teams. Employees need identity in the workplace i.e., reputation, certication, achievements, etc. This shows individual ability and demonstrates mastery of skills and accomplishments. Badges solve this problem and help employees to earn rewards, skills and validation.

Set Goals

Set Rules

Rewards

Leaderboards/ Scoreboards

Real-Time Feedback

Measurement

Badges

Figure 3

cognizant 20-20 insights

Quick Take
Organization Benets
Gamication has a potential market in assisting project teams to deliver quality software that exceeds customer expectations and meets their business objectives. As such, it is a tool to enable enhanced collaboration, communication and knowledge capture and retention.

Rewards and recognition: It gives employees

greater motivation as they receive appreciation, respect, rewards and recognition throughout the gamication contest.

Track

Employee

adoption and mastery of new skills/technologies: Developers will be skilled and masterful in new technologies along with dened processes during the gamication run. The drive to master new skills is an essential motivator for employees and improves their engagement. Gamication can help generate new product/process ideas and solutions and discover experts and information quickly and easily. motivation: Running gamication contests improves employee motivation and will be seen as a talent recognition tool. collaboration: Gamication helps team members stay connected with others in the team and be more sociable. retention: Announce attractive rewards and a recognition program that encourages and motivates employees to attain business goals. This increases the chance to retain employees.

progress and feedback: Gamication allows employees to keep track of their progress and obtain real-time feedback i.e., they will not have to wait for yearly progress assessments. Understanding employee expertise is crucial for a company to build a passionate team and maximize value for both employees and the organization. improvement: Improve consistency and quality by providing real-time feedback and metrics on performance versus benchmarks and let employees know how their efforts compare to their past performance. satisfaction: Gamication can improve the quality of customer care. When employees are engaged and committed, their quality of work improves. competition: Create healthy competition and collaboration among employees in a scalable and automated way to drive repeatable results.

Productivity

Employee Employee Employee

Customer

Drive

For starters, point systems and rules should be transparent to employees. During one gamication effort for a client in the legal software product development space, we encountered confusion about the game rules and point system. Rules dened in the gamication effort were not explained properly to employees, which led to confusion. Due to this confusion, only a few employees were happy when the results were announced and rewards and badges were bestowed. Transparency in communication about the rules and points system and educating the entire team on the process before kick-starting gamication is critical. Draft a clear communication plan and make it transparent with employees during the effort; this can ensure communication with meaning for all.

Things may go wrong if the actual business problem and customer demands are not addressed as part of the gamication process. Therefore, organizations need to elevate their understanding by conducting employee surveys and make the required improvements in their next gamication endeavor. Finally, gamication should be created to enhance organizational fun, collaboration and competition where employees will be motivated and recognized with rewards for interacting with one another to achieve the business goals.

Ready, Set, Go
The use of gaming elements such as badges, levels, points, rewards, etc. can help to identify and recognize employee talents and achieve-

cognizant 20-20 insights

ments. The organization should focus on the areas to engage and encourage employee collaboration as a community. Sustaining developer interest in a long and monotonous process can be challenging, raising obstacles to rewarding and recognizing performers. To overcome this, organizations must:

Goals:

Reduce backlog maintenance defects count from 500+ to fewer than 50 defects in a three month time frame. We published a dashboard to the bug x team on a weekly basis to show the progress of defect xing, featuring a trend chart and announcement of top developers of the week (along with their photos and scores). (BPL) gamication contest, similar to an Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket series (with names and captains), to reduce the backlog maintenance defect count. The objective of this contest was to engage both development and maintenance teams to reduce the backlog defect count within three months. The game elements involved distributing orange caps to bug busters (employees who xed the most defects), purple caps to bug crushers (teams that xed the most defects) and green caps to backlog controllers (employees from the maintenance team who xed the most defects) along with the weekly publication of winners and the top ve contenders. This encouraged the team to break out of the silo and x more production defects in a shorter period. The defects have now been reduced to double digits. The maintenance teams responsibility is to control the backlogs by xing all the incoming defects the same week they are identied to ensure no spillovers are added to the backlog list. Weekly rewards and recognition are given to developers and module leads based on the bug x league scores.

Leaderboard:

Accelerate the feedback cycle. Establish tangible goals and level the playing
eld.

Solution: We rolled out a Bugs Premier League

Identify

challenges and create meaningful

rewards.

Gamication brings a mindset shift to employees and motivates them to continuously perform better throughout the year. Peer pressure kicks in and facilitates a faster feedback cycle that shares achievements and improvement areas with employees. Gamication helps us to deliver quality software that exceeds client expectations and fullls their business requirements. It also can be leveraged in employee learning and training programs and innovation initiatives. Gamication techniques and frameworks can be applied in both application development (AD) and application value management (AVM) projects, as highlighted below.

Gamication in Delivery Model: Case Studies

Bugs Premier League: Improving Defect Closure Rate

Background:

One of the leading global providers of legal information and services solutions to professionals had encountered a major challenge in controlling production backlog defects. The count was growing, with an average of 40 to 50 new defects every week. The assigned maintenance team did not have enough bandwidth to address the backlog as a result of constant inows. Given resource bandwidth constraints and business stakeholder dependencies, the weekly defect outow has been drastically reduced. Due to high defects inow every week and clarication dependencies with customer SMEs and project stakeholders, the backlog defects count surpassed 500. Customer budget constraints made it difcult to add more positions to control the incoming defects and reduce the backlog count. Our management was concerned about the rising backlog numbers every week. Developers appeared to lack the motivation to go that extra mile to x the backlog defects. cognizant 20-20 insights

Benets: >> Resolved

800+ defects in a 10-week time frame; defect backlog count was reduced to double digits from 500 (baselined at the start of the contest). all incoming defects in the same week. 75%.

>> Developers controlled the backlogs by xing >> Increased

defect xing rate by more than

>> Increased employee motivation and engagement, with many of them now going the extra mile to clear out backlog defects. customer satisfaction and their condence in our team as a result of our gamication effort.

>> Improved

3Curve Contest: Improving Code Quality and Performance

Background: Cost of quality was high, as nearly

20% of our effort was spent on reviewing code

The Bugs Premier League

BUGS PREMIER LEAGUE: Gamication

Rolling Out Bugs Premier League (BPL) Contest to reduce maintenance backlog count from 500+ to less than 50 BPL Rules
League Duration : April Jun 2013

BPL Team
Royal Shepard TOC Risers Retriever Riders Search Super Kings
Scores for Severity

Fixing SEV 2 defects takes priority Do not x other severity defects until the SEV 2s are cleared. Fix/analyze other module defects only after clearing their module backlogs. Start xing SEV 3 defects only after bringing down SEV 2 backlog count to 0. Bonus points will be awarded to whoever xes/analyze the other module defects. Status update must be shared with Maintenance Lead on a daily basis.

BPL Weekly Awards

Mr. BugBuster Associate who xes the most number of defects. Bug Crushers Team xes the most number of defects. Backlog Controller Maintenance team associate who xes the most number of defects.

Severity Sev 1 Sev 2 Sev 3 Sev 4,5,6

BPL Tournament Awards

Bug Crushers of the Tournament Recognize team who xed most no. of defects during tournament duration. BugBuster of the Tournament The associate who xed most no. of defects during tournament duration. Best Backlog Controller This award goes to maintenance team associate who xed most no. of defects during tournament duration.

Rewards and Gifts

Score/Points 100 50 25 10

SMASH BUGS ACROSS THE BOUNDARY AND WIN EXCITING PRIZES

Figure 4

Trophy e Gifts Surpris s Ce rti int cat Po es H A

Bugs Premier League Leaderboard

BUGS PREMIER LEAGUE: Content Services

BPL Weekly Awards (Week 15-July 5th to July 11th) BugBuster Leon 50 points Backlog Trend Chart
600 500 400 300 200 100
49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49

492 492 492

492

Buglog Controller Pattabi 275 points Bug Crushers TOC Risers

492

492

492

492

492 492 492 492 492

49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 49

49 49

49

492 492 492

49 49 49 49

Current League Toppers Orange Cap Praveen Points 2025 Green Cap Pattabi Praveen Leon

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

Points 5100 4450 3475

Purple Cap TOC Risers

Points 9420 2955 2112 860

Sreelakshmi 1748 Chenna 1225

Search Super Kings Retrieve Riders Royal Shepards

SMASH BUGS ACROSS THE BOUNDARY AND WIN EXCITING PRIZES

Figure 5

cognizant 20-20 insights

and test cases. Performance bottlenecks were identied later in the systems development lifecycle (SDLC), and the cost to x emerging performance issues was high and impacted our release schedule. Code quality was not easily measured. More defects arose from the system testing cycle as test cases were insufcient.

sent to developers via e-mail to take appropriate actions and x all violations. Use of performance driven development (PDD) to identify and x performance bottlenecks in the coding phase of the project. Recognize and reward developers and module leads each week based on the progress shown along these parameters.

Goals:

Showcase delivery excellence with respect to code quality, performance improvements and on-time tasks completion.

Benets: >> Cost of quality was reduced 75% by auto>> Development and integration of niche technologys rules with SONAR brings more control over defect leakage.

Leaderboard: Published weekly to the team to show the progress of release deliverables and announce top developers of the week along with their photos. Solution: Implementation of SONAR an opensource code-analysis tool for improving code quality and customization to include customer-specic coding standards. Integration of niche technology rules and code coverage under the one roof of SONAR. Automated evaluation of code using SONAR and a report

mating the code quality checks and code and test coverage.

>> Easy monitoring of the progress through au>> Reduction of performance-related issues at
the later stage of the development cycle.

tomated scripts to run based on the current version of the source control system.

3Curve Gamication Contest

3Curve Contest: Gamication

Launching gamication contest for release deliverables encourage team members to showcase their excellence in code quality, features completion & performance improvements.
The winners are announced every Friday afternoon:

Code Quality Points Table

Criteria
Introduce new SONAR violations Fixing existing SONAR violations Fixing defect raised by SME or onsite Team INT/CERT cycle Defect xed by development team INT/CERT cycle Defect raised by testing team INT/CERT cycle

Best module for the week Best developer for the week
The contest is measured under three parameters:

Sev1 Defect
-50 Points 30 Points 30 Points 25 Points -50 Points

Sev2 Defect
-30 Points 20 Points 20 Points 15 Points -30 Points

Sev3 Defect
-10 Points 10 Points 10 Points 5 Points -10 Points

Code quality using SONAR Features/tasks completion on time Performance improvements using PDD At the end of the release, best developers and best modules and most valuable player awards will be
announced.

Performance Measurements Points Table

Criteria
Meet performance KPIs Deviation or performance degradation

Points
50 Points -20 Points

Rewards and Gifts

Trophy
Cer tic

Features/Tasks Completion Points Table

Criteria
On time task/feature completion Delay/incomplete feature completion

Points
20 Points -10 Points

AH

Po

s int

ate

Figure 6

cognizant 20-20 insights

Gamication Tools and Measurements

Cost of Quality

SONAR Integration
Performance-Driven Development

Development and integration of niche technology rules with SONAR brings more control over defect leakage. Cost of quality was brought down by 75% by automating code quality checks and code and test coverage. Performance driven development (PDD) process was incorporated to address performance hotspots during development cycle. Reduction of performance-related issues in the later stage of development. Effective usage of TFS Urban Turtle to track the development task status and timely feature completion. Innovation Caf portal encourages creativity among associates and recognizes out-of-the-box thinking. This portal helps associates to log their ideas, conduct depth rating and select the best innovation and top ideators. Providing interface to upload the generated ideas into iSpace portal. Defect Tracker pulls down the open defects from the system and circulates the dashboard via e-mail to the development team. Associate takes an action based on the published dashboard and starts to fix the defects accordingly.

Performance

On-Time Delivery
Innovation & Thought Leadership

Urban Turtle
Innovation Cafe
Maintenance Defect Tracker

Backlog Reduction

Figure 7

Delivery Excellence Achievements Post-Gamication

Cost of Quality
Reduced cost of quality 75% reduction in CoQ. Fully automated integrated SONAR dashboard. 9.75 Highest Codenizant Score among the Java projects at Cognizant level.

Employee Motivation & Satisfaction

> 190 rewards & recognitions regular floor meet, leaderboard, badges, Wah! points.

75%

4.0

Improved employee motivation as they receive appreciation, respect and R&R throughout the gamification contest.

Innovation Value

Performance Fixes Effort

80% improvement on performance fixes effort. APDD performance driven development used. Proactive measures to identify & fix performance bottleneck in dev. cycle.

DELIVERY HIGHLIGHTS hours

$1.6M

400+ ideas from 90 associates. Implementing ideas worth $1.6 million. 100% innovation index in less than 6 months. 30+ tools implemented.

200

<50

Backlog Tickets
Declining backlog tickets <50 tickets pending. Increased customer satisfaction.

Figure 8

cognizant 20-20 insights

Footnotes
1

Gartner Press Release, Analysts Explore the Role of Enterprise Architects in Gamication, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/1629214. Gartner Press Release, Gamication Trends and Strategies to Help Prepare for the Future, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2251015.

About the Author

Senthil Rajamarthandan is a Senior Manager within Cognizants Advanced Solutions Practice. He has more than 16 years of service delivery experience with a key focus on global project and service delivery management, with an emphasis on P&L and delivery management in North America. He is currently responsible for program and solution delivery of an online legal research application developed by a leading U.S.-based legal information services provider. He has delivered large critical programs successfully for Fortune 500 organizations across multiple segments. He holds a B.E. (electrical and electronics) and a masters degree in business administration from ICFAI university and is a certied Project Management Professional (PMP). He can be reached at [email protected].

About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the worlds leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 171,400 employees as of December 31, 2013, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

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