Game-based Learning in IT Service Transition

The Case of a Mobile Sales Service by a Small Team in Brazil

Thiago Paiva Brito

, Josias Paes

and J. Antão B. Moura

Graduate Course on IT Management, UNIPÊ, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil

Unipêtech, UNIPÊ, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil

Systems and Computing Department, Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG), Campina Grande, PB, Brazil

Keywords: Game-based Learning, BPM, ITIL, Software Deployment, Motivation, Deployment Time, Learning Curve.

Abstract: IT Service Transition (ITST) is naturally challenging because it usually involves changes that run counter

customer and provider staffs’ preconceptions, habits and established practices. Changes that affect implicit

or explicit business processes (BP) adopted by the provider’s Service Transition team are particularly

daunting since they may impact the team’s morale negatively and contaminate customer’s personnel who

might be anxious to start with. Inability to properly implement and manage changes due to Service

Transition process adjustments and retooling may lengthen deployment time, lower quality and even cause

the provider to fail. In order to efficiently handle such changes, the provider’s ITST team must be motivated

towards, trained in and quickly made proficient with new work tools, routines and practices. This paper

provides preliminary evidence that blending Business Process Management (BPM) to gamification concepts

and tools can accelerate learning in an IT Service Transition context. For that, we consider the case of a

small IT Service provider in Brazil when transitioning a sales support IT service from Palm OS to Android

devices.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL),

the mission of IT Service Transition (ITST) is to

deliver services that are required by the business into

operational use (Macfarlane, 2007). However, due to

the particularities of the target environment where

each service will operate, Service Transition is likely

to be the most critical phase of the IT service life

cycle. ITIL documentation goes on to prescribe what

needs to be done in terms of recommended Service

Transition practices, but little is offered on how to,

in fact, implement such practices. Nor could it be

otherwise since implementation is to be subject to

the provider’s idiosyncrasies and preferences,

service characteristics and clients (business) needs.

Hence, the provider must design and adjust its

processes to meet the Service Transition tasks and

goals at hand. Further, making the IT staff learn (and

adopt) new working routines is usually met by

human resistance which in turn, increases risks of

one making unsuccessful ITST efforts. Often and

understandably, the designer ends up treating the

results as trade secret. Thus, one is left with the

option of experimenting with ITST Business Process

Management (BPM).

We suggest that blending gamification to BPM

may accelerate the learning curve for new Service

Transition tasks and thus ease transition complexity

and risks. Here, “gamification” as in (Werbach and

Hunter, 2012; Deterding, et al., n.d.), is the use of

game mechanics and game design techniques in non-

game contexts (e.g., in an ITIL training context).

The suggestion presupposes that motivational and

training sessions for the Service Transition team

through a gamified approach could trigger just the

level of engagement one needs for the success of

learning how to work with new transition Business

Processes (BP) and tools. A gamified approach to

ITST could create a little bit of fun and amusement

around working processes (Werbach and Hunter,

2012), therefore, should help to break the ice and

diminish the resistance to needed, progressive, and

beneficial change to Service Transition processes

management. The objective of this paper is to

present and evaluate a game-based “learn by doing”

approach for ITST.

110

Paiva Brito T., Paes J. and Antão B. Moura J..

Game-based Learning in IT Service Transition - The Case of a Mobile Sales Service by a Small Team in Brazil.

DOI: 10.5220/0004828401100116

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 110-116

ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Some works in the literature use games to

provide an engaging, self-reinforcing context in

which to motivate and educate players (serious

games) (Kankaanranta and Neittaanmki, 2008).

Other works simply try to engage users into work

through fun (Castellani, et al., 2013). The

bibliography on gamified education indicates that

gamification aspects facilitate learning and working

in professional and business environment in general

(please see for instance, the proceedings of CSEDU

2012, 2013 – www.csedu.org). Not much has been

published however, on applying gamification to

ITSM contexts.

The game-based learning approach proposed

here focuses on using fun as a tool for enabling

changes in ITIL processes (ITST) from a possibly ad

hoc, undocumented state to a properly managed

process where performance can be measured, the

actors involved get feedback about their work and

company stakeholders perceive real gains. As such,

it is hoped that the game-based learning method to

be detailed here also contributes to the state-of-the-

practice of ITSM (ITIL in particular).

Thus, the research question this paper addresses,

in order to provide (preliminary) evidence that

gamified education is also worthwhile in ITST

contexts is: Can one provide evidence that

gamification also makes learning and working more

effective and efficient in the technical and

specialized setting of IT Service Transition?

Here, we assume that preliminary evidence may

consists of (1) signs of increased motivation by

Service Transition staff for learning and applying

new transition processes (“learn by doing”); (2)

declarations by Service Transition team and

company stakeholders that they are satisfied the

game-based training approach helps them address

complexity and risk issues successfully in a cost-

effective manner; and (3) the approach renders

verifiable results for the efficiency and effectiveness

of the (newly adopted) ITST processes.

2 PROPOSED ITST BPM GAME

The proposed game-based approach to ITST is

detailed here to the extent of supporting the

evaluation of how the approach will: i) motivate and

prepare a small ITST team to comply with new

processes and tools and perform some less creative

and repetitive activities with the required level of

attention and care; and, ii) help to diminish team’s

resistance to improvements in the transition process

provided by the BPM cycle (Rosemann, 2010). In

short, the overall objective of the gamified approach

is to ease learning and usage of ITIL’s Service

Transition processes.

Borrowing from game design, rather than using

game-based technology, or other game related

practices, and using some game elements (rather

than full-fledged games) (Deterding, et al., 2013),

the ITST gamified approach is designed and applied

according to a somewhat empirical methodology and

uses Points, Badges and Leader boards (PBLs)

derived from a progression map (modeled as a BPM

Notation diagram).

The learning approach calls for IT staff to

initially study a BP diagram (BPD) which serves as a

(process) progression map for navigation through the

(ITST) game. To reduce resistance in using the

“map”, two basic prerequisites are to be met:

i. The diagram should provide a clear and

unambiguous vision of the whole ITST process.

Process documentation should also clarify the

objectives and procedures for each activity the

team is to perform.

ii. Improvements to any process should be

communicated in a simple way since changes

will be clearly shown in the progression map.

The reward scheme of the game-based ITST

learning approach awards points as follows:

 For transition tasks concluded on time and which

are of:

- Low complexity: 5 points

- Medium complexity: 10 points

- High complexity: 20 points

 Bonus:

- Tasks concluded before deadline: +5 points

 Unlimited additional points will be given for

exceptional performance in any task (at the

discretion of the team’s manager or other higher

ranking company officer):

- For every customization process bug found and

corrected: +10 points

- For every automated test coded for a specific

client customization: +10 points

- For every automated test coded for bugs in the

base system: +20 points

- For every suggestion of improvement in the

whole transition process: +20 points

The amount of accumulated points will reward

the “player” with “Ninja Badges” as indicated:

 150 points: Badge “Ninja Apprentice” (white belt).

 450 points: Badge “Ninja Novice” (yellow belt).

 750 points: Badge “Ninja Deputy” (green belt).

 1500 points: Badge “NINJA!” (black belt).

The design assumes that the amount of points

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accumulated by a BP actor will serve as an

immediate feedback about her/his learning and work

performance at task completion time, functioning as

extrinsic motivation by external regulation (Deci &

Ryan, s.d.).

An additional assumption is that extrinsic

motivation also serves as “identification of merit”

(through awards of points and badges). A given

badge identifies a certain professional skill level on

IT service transition. Identification (Deci & Ryan,

s.d.) through merit points and badges could boost

ITST team members’ sense of security about their

professional ITSM skills.

With a badge structure assigned at each

punctuation level and classifying the ITST BP actor

as a “Transition Ninja”, the game-base ITST

learning (and practice) approach acts on the extrinsic

motivation through introjection. Here, we expect that

a future recognition as “Ninja” will be introjected by

pride and need for professional evolution.

The intrinsic motivation of the team will be

stimulated by unexpected bonus awards for each

activity completed with exceptional performance and

other natural stimuli coming from their perception of

fun in playing the (ITST BP) learning game.

2.1 Implementation

Implementation of the proposed gamified ITST

learning approach yielded a PBL tool that registers

and maintains the scores of each player (ITST BP

actor). For the case study to be examined next, the

implementation efforts consisted of building a shell

of game elements (to support the proposed game

mechanics) around a BPM tool. Basically, three

new screens were added to a Python/Django system

to allow for (see also Figures 1): i) registration of a

new player; ii) definition of badges and point

awarding rules; and, iii) presentation of a leader

board to inform on scores and to support awarding

and management of points (by authorized

evaluators). Total implementation costs amounted to

only 12 programmer-hours. This low cost is

evidence that the proposed gamified approach for

learning ITST processes may be cost-efficient, thus

providing a positive, partial-answer to the research

question.

3 APPLICATION AND RESULTS

Application of the proposed game-based ITST

learning approach was carried out at Connect

(www.cnnt.com.br), a small software development

company operating in mobile computing in Brazil

since 2002. In this case study, Connect’s ITST team

was to carry out the migration of a sales support IT

service from Palm OS to Android devices. Migration

was for the benefit of a client’s business units

distributed over a wide operations area, from

industrial to wholesale sectors (each “unit”

comprised a number of users). The design and

transition process for the new service involved

evaluation of the Palm OS system legacy

requirements; (re)implementation, testing, and

validation of these requirements on the new Android

platform; reconfiguration of the cloud hosting

service to operate with both old and new systems

during the transition phase; deployment; sales force

training; training of other sales process stakeholders

(supervisors, billers, IT staff and company

managers) and finally, launch (go live). Due to

particulars of each unit’s requirements, all these

tasks were evaluated prior to their execution to

mitigate risks and to establish each unit’s deadline

for service launch (operation).

Connect’s ITST team consisted of two software

engineers, a trainee and a team manager, all male,

aged 27, 24, 18 and 24, respectively. These actors

joined the learning game voluntarily. The process of

changing the actors’ work routine started with

training sessions on goals, objectives, and their

linkage to desired outcomes; target ITSM BPs; BPM

basics and notation; and, instructions on how to read

and interpret the BPMN notation. A first version of

the proposed “progression game”, was presented to

the team with the initial version of the BPD

constructed for this specific transition case (mobile

sales system). The point and badge award criteria

were then spelled out besides introducing the

persons responsible for evaluating the work and for

granting rewards.

Application of the gamified ITST BPs evolved

along three stages. In the first stage, Connect’s ITST

team operated using mostly undocumented, albeit

ITIL-oriented deployment BPs which it felt, would

likely lead to a high number of cases of perceived

low quality deployment, rework to fix problems, and

schedule overruns. In short, an overall,

unsatisfactory client experience might ensue. The

(pre)existing transition process was used for a

month. During that time, the team became aware of a

lack of established procedures to handle

unsuccessful internal tests or validation by the client.

In many cases, due to the lack of clearance about

what needed to be done in the occurrence of these

exceptional cases; changes were also carried with no

documentation and without running all the needed

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Figure 1:Illustration of gamified ITST BPD (Business Process Diagram).

tests over again. These findings offered the first

opportunity to change existing ITST BPs and see

how the change would be absorbed by the now

gamified, transition team.

In stage two, which lasted 2 months, the process

was refactored to include some exception-handling

procedures to address the identified deficiencies.

BPD changes were documented, explained to the

team and incorporated in a new version of the

transition BPD.

A few penalties were applied to the actors for

not following the new procedures, but the new

process as a whole was adopted smoothly. Two

months into stage two, some difficulty on

performing the deployment task was detected. This

was generated by the deployment package building

activity, a highly complex activity and that was not

properly detailed in the process documentation.

In stage three, this activity was then broken up

generating a new sub-process. The inclusion of this

sub-process was the third major change to the

gamified transition BPD map. ITST team’s

resistance to learning and absorbing this last change

was higher than before. We attribute this resistance

to the fact that the change, now, was not a team’s

suggestion but resulted from an issue detected by

the manager’s analysis of their work performance

while deploying the new mobile sales system. Even

with the loss of points, some weeks for training,

coaching and monitoring were required until usage

of the process stabilized. The final ITST BPD with

sub-processes and game elements which supported

the game-based learning ITST approach is

illustrated in Figure 1.

The bands in Figure 1 represent the status of the

performed task: the red “X” band is a task that

failed approval by the manager and the green starry

band represents an approved task for which points

may be awarded. In the case of a final task in the

process, the graduation evaluation will be executed

and, if the actor reached the required amount of

points to advance to the next graduation level, he

would be awarded a ninja badge in the “shuriken

blade” step of the process.

3.1 Evaluation

The evaluation of the gamified ITST BP learning

approach was done both in quantitative and

qualitative terms.

3.1.1 Qualitative Evaluation

The qualitative evaluation was carried out by

structured and open interviews involving all team

members and corporate stakeholders (shareholders).

The structured interviews allowed for Likert Scale

(Uebersax, 2006) answers only and were meant to

capture the impressions and reactions of the

transition process staff (except for the manager who

had coauthored the proposal) to the following

aspects:

 General ITST process vision: to determine

whether the actors view the transition process

(through the transition BPD) as a useful tool for

orientation when performing ITST tasks and

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whether the gamified process could effectively

solve previously existing ITST problems;

 Professional confidence: to understand whether

the gamified approach truly brought the ITST

team members clarification, confidence about the

tasks to be executed and also, whether the

approach is of any help in uprooting any useless

tasks in the process and whether the tasks led to

relationship difficulties with the clients;

 Impressions on the gamified approach: basically,

to probe whether the motivational triggers we

designed the gamified approach to include were

actually activated.

Results for the qualitative evaluation by the

transition team´s members where obtained from the

Likert Scale (1-‘Totally Disagree”; 2-“Partially

Disagree”; 3-“Neutral”; 4-“Partially Agree”; 5-

“Totally Agree”) as follows:

A. General process vision

i. Assertion: “Upon receiving a transition task, I

identify which tasks I need to perform by

looking at the transition process diagram” –

Answers: three “5”.

ii. Assertion: “I could deploy the mobile sales

service on any kind of client following the

transition process” – Answers: one “3”, one

“4” and one “5”.

iii. Assertion: “The number of problems I face in

the transition process today, is significantly

smaller than when the game-based ITST

learning approach was not used” – Answers:

two “4” and one “5”.

B. Professional confidence

i. Assertion: “Even with the gamified process at

hand, I’m still confused about the tasks I

should perform” – Answers: one “1” and two

“2”.

ii. Assertion: “The transition process has

dispensable tasks” – Answers: two “1” and

one “3”.

iii. Assertion: “I faced problems with my clients

due to the mandatory execution of a task in the

transition process” – Answers: three “1”.

iv. Assertion: “Execution of the transition process

tasks avoids problems during deployment” –

Answers: three “5”.

C. Impressions on the gamified approach

i. Assertion: “I use the gamification points to

evaluate my performance as an IT service

transition analyst” – Answers: one “1” and

two “5”.

ii. Assertion: “Being a transition ‘Ninja’ is

important for me” – Answers: one “1” and two

“5”.

iii. Assertion: “I seek to reach the “black belt”

(Transition Ninja! Badge)” – Answers: two

“3” and one “5”.

iv. Assertion: “I appreciate receiving bonus points

notifications by e-mail” – Answers: one “1”,

one “4” and one “5”.

It is important to notice that Assertion “A.i” relates

to the research question in the sense that it guides

the staff member to the next activity quickly (thus

contributing to time-efficiency) and Assertion

“A.ii” by helping transition staff to deal with

complexity (thus contributing to effectiveness).

Evaluating the answers obtained in the

interviews, we can see that a general process vision

was indeed established in the minds of the actors.

They clearly recognize the transition process as a

valuable tool to resolve most of the problems they

faced in the transition phase of this specific (sales

automation) software lifecycle. The ITST actors

also indicate that the game-based “learn by doing”

method can help deliver a much more reliable

service to their clients, therefore increasing their

confidence on their own expertise.

As for impressions on the gamification aspects

per se, answers diverged somewhat. The actor who

is also a game design / development expert

disagreed with the others on the motivational

triggers we sought to achieve in three of four of the

questions, remaining neutral in one of them. His

answers possibly indicate that game-based learning

approaches will not make much of an impression on

teams with much technical expertise on game

design. On the other hand, the other actors seemed

to be positively impressed by all the triggers with

exception of one specific case where the

introjection seemed to have a neutral effect. We

attribute this to a low intrinsic motivation for this

one actor on becoming a more qualified transition

analyst, possibly pointing to a lack of alignment

between the work he had to perform and the

professional objectives he set for himself.

In the open interviews the actors conveyed the

impression that the game-based ITST learning

approach helped them to speed up and materialize

knowledge because it “connected and clarified

everything that needed to be done” as commented

by one and as another said: “the board game helped

to remind what needed to be done next”. (Although

the approach still “needs more information on how

to go about doing it”.) Again, the impression of two

players were along the line that “the gamified

approach helped to create a competition atmosphere

and pushed me to try to become “top ninja”. The

game expert however, felt this did not motivate

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him, but he was “(pleasantly) surprised to receive

point award e-mails”.

Connect has three shareholders. One of them

does not participate in the day-to-day operations of

the company. The other two evaluated the gamified

approach from the point of view of the company.

The qualitative evaluation by the shareholders was

carried out by an open-answer, five-question

questionnaire which compared results after

gamification as compared to before:

i. How do you evaluate the performance of the

transition processes?

ii. How do you evaluate the assimilation of the

transition process details?

iii. How do you evaluate the transition staff

performance?

iv. How do you evaluate impact of the gamified

approach in the transition cycle time and

costs?

v. What was the impact of the gamified approach

in client relationship?

The answers provided may be summarized as

follows:

i. Improved transition activity flow. Improved

inter-staff members and staff-client

communication. Better Transition Process

transparency, allowing all involved, including

clients, to follow and anticipate steps.

ii. Faster learning curve. Higher productivity.

Staff better acquainted with the ITST process.

iii. Improved performance. Less time spent on

rework and trying to find out what to do next.

iv. Lower cycle time and hence, lower cost per

transition.

v. Better informed client. Providing better input

to transition staff. Lower rate of complaints.

The above answers provide clear, albeit

preliminary, evidence in favor of a positive answer

to the research question.

3.1.2 Quantitative Evaluation

The quantitative analysis was intended to focus on

two simple but important measures to evaluate

whether the gamified approach had some positive

impact not only on Connect’s employee motivation

but also on the business itself:

 Time for full compliance with the new ITST

process: by full compliance we mean that all

process errors do not exceed 1% of the tasks

performed in the whole process for every process

execution in a period of three months;

 Average (whole) deployment process turnaround

time: average of the time intervals from when the

process is assigned to an actor to completion of

(software) deployment. (Client-side delays were

purged from evaluation figures).

Quantitative evaluation results indicate that full

compliance with the new process was achieved four

months after the last change to the ITST process.

Table 1 brings evolutionary milestones. Average

turnaround deployment times for the sales

automation system are given in Table 2 for some

business units (BUs) before and after the gamified

transition learning approach was adopted.

Table 1: Milestones.

Action Date

First version 25

October 2012

Badges and Bonus

pointing included

November 2012

First badge achieved 29

January 2013

Final version 5

February 2013

Process Stability Reached 17

May 2013

Table 2: Deployment Turnaround Times.

Client

Comple

xity

Deploymen

t Time

Before

Game-

based

learning

BU 1 Medium 10 months

BU 2 Medium 5 months

BU 3 Low 6 months

BU 4

High

3 months

After

Game-

based

learning

BU 5 Low 1 month

BU 6 Low 1 month

BU 7 Medium 1 month

BU 8 High 20 days

BU 9 Low 18 days

“Complexity” in Table 2 indicates the level of

deployment complexity as attributed by the team

depending on the client’s requirements and the

number of business rules implemented or

customized in the deployed sales system.

Deployment time is the approximate time interval

between a client’s initial request and the final

validation of the requirements by the client for a

given business unit. One notices a significant

reduction in deployment times in favor of the

gamified approach. One should look into this

reduction carefully, though, because it can be

influenced by other factors such as diminished flow

into other operational processes (like incident and

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problem management which were performed in part

by the same team); the team’s growing technical

expertise and experience with the ITST process and

with the sales system technologies as time passed

(which we believe made even more complex tasks

faster); and, their disposition to learn.

On the other hand, Table 2 indicates an

accelerated learning curve with the gamified

approach. Assuming increasing expertise correlates

with decreasing turnaround times, one can see that

ITST expertise improves as time passes and with a

rapid acceleration immediately after adopting the

game-base learn by doing approach.

3.2 Validation

Gamification of ITST processes depends on the

system of interest and it is on-going. Here, a game-

based ITST learning approach was used by a small

team of professionals. Therefore, the answer to the

research question is preliminary and restricted to the

above context of the case study. On the other hand,

since this context is somewhat representative of the

industry – particularly of small companies – the

answer will be meaningful, at least in what concerns

“face validity” (Litwin, 1995).

We say the proposed game-based ITST learning

approach has face validity if it “looks like” it is

going to lead to a positive answer for the research

question.

To test the approach for face validity, we asked

the participants in the case study to indicate what

they thought the answer to the research question

would be. The respondents, unanimously, gave

“yes” as an answer (the corresponding Guttman

scaling was “Yes”, “No” and “Not sure”).

4 CONCLUSIONS

This paper summarized research on a novel

approach that blends gamification concepts,

elements and tools to those of business process

modeling (BPM) together with learning and

teaching methodologies to communicate and deploy

changes to IT service transition (ITST) processes.

The approach was economically implemented and

applied to the case of a small team charged with the

migration of a mobile OS-based sales automation

system in Brazil. Results indicate the team was able

to learn and operate faster and more effectively with

the approach.

By considering a small, IT service provider, the

paper also provides early evidence gamification can

bring benefits and be within technical and financial

reach of firms in general, not just major IT players.

That evidence, together with the focus on ITST, is

the main contributions of this paper and endorses

recent suggestions in the literature that ITIL

gamification may offer a positive outlook for ITSM

practitioners. Further work is needed to answer the

posed research question with greater confidence, for

different transition scenarios and for team

compositions and sizes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank anonymous CSEDU 2014

reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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