This blog stems from my experience participating at the Apollo 13 Business simulation played in Delhi recently. We had around 8 delegates who were specialized in delivering ITSM engagements internally or externally to their clients.
One of the key differences of the workshop was that we had 8 people from 6 different companies who got a chance to meet and interact with their fellow industry colleagues first time through the game.
From a background and experience perspective, delegates had around 10+ years of experience on an average and belonged to some leading end user organizations/IT companies in India & abroad.
While the participants voiced out several key learning`s over the 4 rounds as mentioned below, I had some great eye openers with this event and that is the beauty of running such simulations. Every time, the context, reflection and outcomes are totally different.
My personal takeaways from the whole exercise were as follows
a) Forming, Norming, Storming and Performing exercise /Team building that can be done easily when you have the new joiners run through this simulation as part of the New- Hire Orientation. They have fun, learning and overall develop a personal bond quickly before they are deployed to projects
b) While trainings like ITIL V3 Foundation need investment of 2 days of time and effort for people to gain knowledge, these simulations bring about significant learning aspects to build competency like knowledge, behaviors, Skills and attitude
c) One of the ITIL V3 Expert trainer mentioned that this simulation was an eye opener and a great experience of learning by doing. By this way he believed that the retention of knowledge would be far more longer for students
d) It would be a great opportunity to play a simulation with the project stakeholders before kicking off the ITSM project. There is a whole lot of things that we unlearn and learn by doing.
e) Finally, lots of people have difficulty in articulating how to drive CSI in their organizations. With rounds 1 to 4, there are action items that get reflected by participants and see definite improvements to carry those transfer skills to workplace. This could aid them for better efficiency and effectiveness in their journey to service excellence.
