Keeping a Software Developer’s skills current, relevant and sharp is pretty much a career long pursuit. Technologies change and evolve constantly, and advancements like the sudden breakthrough of Generative AI can leave your teams with entirely new disciplines to familiarise themselves with seemingly overnight. Part of being a good developer is gaining the skill of learning how to learn effectively, and it’s one that is emphasised inside the well renowned Northcoders Bootcamp. But we can make that path easier by leveraging Gamified Learning with our own tech teams.
Push Start To Begin – What is Gamification?
Put simply, Gamification is the employment of methods and techniques that games, and in particular video games, use to keep players interested, engaged and invested. The statistics around Gamification in general are staggering, with estimates that it will generate over $30 Billion dollars in revenue per year by 2025, and some suggesting more than $100 Billion in 2032. And it’s easy to see why, when 85% of respondents report being more engaged when using Gamified solutions over more ‘traditional’ methods. It is almost certain that you will have encountered some level of gamification in business by now, such as Badges or Levels for achievement, or comparing workplace results in a Leaderboard with other members of your organisation. But Gamified Learning specifically is a potent force for driving education, and in our use case can help upskill our teams efficiently and enjoyably. Back to the stats – gamified learning experiences can lead to an 18% increase in employee motivation, while reducing Employee training time by up to 50%.
Select Level – Choosing your approach
The level of Gamification varies massively between companies, platforms and even learning paths. Codecademy – my go to resource for a quick overview or review of coding languages, leverages most of the aforementioned techniques such as badges and leaderboards, but is perhaps slightly more traditional in its actual teaching methods. TerminalQuest (formerly TwillioQuest) is much more immersive, with a game narrative and controllable characters to keep you invested in the game and your learning path. Somewhere in the middle is AWS Cloud Quest (you’ll notice the word ‘Quest’ gets used A LOT in these things), which at first glance seems like an accomplished third person Role Playing Game, but in practice the ‘quests’ themselves are more mundane, following simple instructions to navigate AWS console and complete ClickOp tasks. All approaches are valid and may appeal to different developers.
Join Multiplayer? Using competition to encourage productivity
Competitions can be great ways to learn new skills or be exposed to new services. I have found AWS GameDays and AWS Jams to be deeply rewarding in that regard, whilst also promoting ‘softer’ skills like team cohesion and communication. And there’s the added incentive of rewards at the end, be it prizes (I’ve been fortunate enough to win trips to Las Vegas, Silverstone and the US Grand Prix through some of these tournaments) or simply bragging rights. All these sorts of competitions usually involve whimsical or frivolous narratives to keep the feeling lighthearted, they also simulate real world issues that developer teams may encounter in day to day work – infrastructure failures, spikes in usage or even interference from bad actors.
Create Custom Levels – Building your own Gamified Learning systems
Aside from off the shelf or third party solutions, we can bring our own gamified strategies into our teams to try and keep our members motivated and engaged. I’m not referring to the sometimes dreaded ‘Ice breakers’ endured at every training course we’ve ever been on, but using the gamification techniques to recognise and reward your team. Tracking progress like you’re levelling up in an RPG, rewarding particular milestones with badges, or developing a game-like narrative for tackling the current problems the team are facing can all be effective ways to make the work day more enjoyable. Leaderboards and healthy competition can also be employed, but should be handled with care to not demotivate those who aren’t performing as well or finding it difficult to engage themselves in competitive activity. The point of these endeavours is to be inclusive and not off putting. Linking these achievements to real world rewards, either as a team or individual, can also be an effective way to get people invested.
Mission Complete!
Gamification has already permeated many aspects of working life, both within the day to day running of teams and the almost constant training and upskilling required to keep a team relevant. As leaders we can adopt and adapt to these practices to enhance our team’s experience and keep them engaged and motivated. The age old adage “Enjoy your job and you’ll never work a day in your life” may be overstating it, but we can certainly use these Gamified Learning techniques to make at least some of the time at work fun, whilst also achieving the best possible results. To learn more about how Tech Leads like myself enhance and upskill the teams that we embed into your organisation, please get in touch.
