Gamification techniques and Scrum
Hello scrum practitioners,
Wanted to know your opinion if use of gamification techniques by scrum teams in in according to the rules of scrum.
Although tempting, but I don't think it is. Reason being, I feel that with any external motivation like rewards, points etc. . team might start focusing on winning the reward, rather than the commitments to goals (sprint, product or DOD).
I don't have any empirical evidence for my statements above , hence wanted to confirm my understanding or hear from anyone who has tried to implement it in their teams.
Any advice or feedback would be highly appreciated.
P.S : I've tried searching for this topic on the forum but couldn't find a relevant thread.
My personal experience is that if successful Scrum team does not receive any material benefit from the material value they help to create for organization who sponsors Scrum, they wil inevitably loose motivation.
Unless they are motivated by fear(of being fired usually) or some passion, but its rare.
... team might start focusing on winning rather than the commitments to goals ...
I agree with you, but I also have no real data to support the thinking, but I feel any gaming might have short term gains that is difficult to sustain. Some fun games now and then probably ok.
Personally I favour the Agile concept of decentralise decision making or empowerment and having a purpose etc.
thanks Nicholas and Pierre for your inputs.
@Nicholas : By points, I mean there are ways which team adopt to include competition within team itself and reward the winners with points. It need not be monetary reward, but induce a sense of winning a competition, which further motivates the team to be winner.
I think this is short sighted gain at the cost of something more meaningful, that is finding ways of faster value delivery.