Realizing cultural change in organizations made easy with serious gaming
Utrecht, August 23th 2017 – The transition to an increasingly digital economy has forced many organizations to review their way of working. From the composition of teams to the way the delivery of services or products is structured: digitization has a profound influence on all departments, teams and employees. Agility and the ability to adjust to rapidly changing circumstances are key. But what does this actually mean, and how can theory be brought into practice to catalize cultural change?
Through an interactive business simulation with the title The Phoenix Project – ServiceNow, Dutch ServiceNow service provider Plat4mation and Dutch business simulation developer GamingWorks enable teams to experience how to work according to DevOps principles. In this way, they can experience first hand if DevOps is suited for them and what benefits it may bring. The simulation consists of two rounds, the first round being a card game which enables teams to learn where their communication needs improvement and what their bottlenecks are. The second round teams are supported by the Service Management platform ServiceNow, through which they can apply DevOps ways of working (such as agile) to fictitious business scenarios.
In addition to experiencing what working according to DevOps principles entails, teams will also gain insight into the maturity level of their communication. Based on this simulation, organizations can make an informed decision whether DevOps is suited for its teams and the organization as a whole. The simulation was originally developed by the Dutch business simulation developer GamingWorks.
Elmer de Valk, managing partner at Plat4mation, highlights the benefits of this business simulation: “Many organizations struggle with rapidly changing requirements for their services or products. These requirements are either defined by the organization itself, for example HR, or driven by customer demand. This can put a large strain on teams and individual employees, as they are under constant stress to deliver and may not have the right tools or way of working to be able to do so. It is a well known fact that prolonged stress leads to decreased motivation of individuals and teams. A much overlooked but instrumental question in this respect is how to create a culture that enables teams to deliver the services or products the organization needs? The business simulation we launch on September 14th provides important building blocks to answer that question.”
The way teams work together for a large part determines whether or not a project succeeds and specified product requirements are met. DevOps, when done right, can catalyze a cultural change in an organization which benefits all teams. For example, a company considers to develop a new online retail platform to better service its customers with new features and an enhanced user experience. The development of this platform will be a big project, with a strict deadline. The work that needs to be done can be moved through different departments, each of them waiting for the other one to finish their part of the project. Given the tight schedule, there is little room for error. Given the scope of the project, it is unrealistic to expect that all requirements will be met in time and the platform will be sufficiently tested before it is deployed. However, when the project is managed and executed according to DevOps principles, development, testing and deployment can be packed in a feedback loop during the project in order to be able to quickly integrate changes, solve problems and respond to new requirements while working with interdisciplinary teams.
De Valk: “Many projects that do not deliver the specified service or product and in which IT is a crucial element, generally suffer from a lack of oversight, unclear specification of the scope and the desired end result and are often plagued by numerous changes of the requirements which they cannot handle properly due to the way they are organized. This does not mean individual teams or employees are to be blamed: the culture within an organization to a very large degree determines project results. With the simulation we are launching the 14th of September, it becomes clear whether and how DevOps could help bring the cultural change that is needed for teams to succeed.”
After a successful pilot phase, Plat4mation will reveal a new interactive way of obtaining cultural changes in an organization on September 14th during the Limitless IT event which is hosted by ServiceNow.
Interested in the free limitless IT event? Please register as soon as possible as places are limited.
About Plat4mation
Based in The Netherlands and Belgium, Plat4mation supports clients all over the world to unleash the potential of ServiceNow. We strive to bring the best implementation and development capabilities in all areas of your organisation, respond to client demands and realise results quickly. We provide a combination of functional and technical expertise, motivation and flexibility to ensure that our consultants turn dreams into reality, efficiently, affordably and with a high customer satisfaction.
We are a ServiceNow Sales, Services, Technology and Training Partner.
We assist organizations by providing a complete set of services from strategic advice, implementation of ServiceNow to the development of ServiceNow applications.
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Elmer de Valk