Learning Game for Business Analysis

by Pushpam Jain
(India)

Question
I am a Business analyst. I want to create awareness about the role and benefits of Business analyst. Can you please help me with a learning game as I do not want to present a PPT?


Answer
Pushpam, although I have described a game for you below, I do believe, however, you will have to augment it with a presentation. The game will help you to create experiential memories that will enable effective processing of the theory of Business Analysis

Preparation: Make paper hats of different colours. There should be as many hats as there are roles. On each hat the name of the role is written.

The roles people will play are those of the different stakeholders in the Business: Share holder, director, Manager, Information manager, supplier, customer, business analyst etc. (Provide a short description of the roles if you need to)


Ask for as many volunteers as the number of roles that you have. Participants pick up a role of their choice and stand in a circle. They are expected to read their role descriptions and understand their roles.


After about five minutes, they are given a business problem related to the Company or industry. They have to discuss this topic in their roles.

They have ten minutes to explore their roles while discussing the topic and reach a place where they have outlined the next steps towards solving the problem.

In the mean time the rest of the group is sitting around the small group that is discussing the business problem - observing the people playing the different roles.

At the end of the ten minutes, when the discussion has stopped (you have to time them and stop them at the end of ten minutes), the volunteer group will take feedback from the rest of the group on the aspects of business analysis, the role of the business analyst and the benefits of the process.