Training Is Project Managers To Deal With Complexity: A Design Science Research Approach Using Serious Gaming

IS (Information Systems) Project Managers need to navigate complexity in many ways. This navigation is inherently difficult because it is an experientially learned process with many externally changing elements, meaning that it takes experience, theory, reflection, and active experimentation to become good at navigating the complexity that IS projects impose. This is an important challenge to tackle for institutions that want to educate potential candidates for IS project management. How can we possibly include both practice and theory and develop IS practitioners’ skills and level of reflection when it comes to navigating complexity? We took on this challenge as teachers of IS project management
because of its complex nature and used IS project management for designing a serious game to make the intangible tangible; by translating the understanding of complexity into prescriptive logics to identify a suitable and effective learning mechanism. Our design science research approach was that of “building and learning” and we report on the difficulties of translation between theory, practical context, and target audience, finding a balance between ‘fun’ and ‘learning’, as well as the impact on group dynamics and applicability of rationalizing rigorous approaches to navigating complexity. We tested the designed board game on both regular students, executive master students, and even realworld practitioners. The game let the participants engage various situations in which they must find a solution based on a theory-informed heuristic reasoning process and a facilitated feedback process.