Adventures in Project Management
Growthabulous! - run your own Growth Board
Growthabulous! is a fun and engaging game to help practise the skills you need to sit on a Growth Board and decide which initiatives you should fund and what feedback you will give to each initiative lead. Your aim is to launch as many successful initiatives as you can that meet the organisation’s strategy within a set number of Growth Boards. The referee ensures the game play is fluid and provides coaching to the players. No prior knowledge of growth boards is needed for the players (the referee should ideally have basic knowledge of a growth board) and the game tales 60-90 minutes to play.
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The scenario
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A Growth Board has been running for many months – you have just taken over from the previous incumbents – so you are now the Growth Board. Your job is to review progress reports and bids that come from innovation teams and decide which to FUND. You can only FUND SIX to continue to the next Growth Board. The others you must either PAUSE or KILL. You are limited to a total of FOUR initiatives being PASUED at any one time – you will soon have to decide whether to FUND or KILL them.
You have 15 tokens to spend each Growth Board. If you don’t spend them you lose them. You cannot exceed your budget.
Each report card gives the latest subjective thinking on Desirability (how much it’s wanted), Feasibility (whether it can be achieved – no time travel allowed!) and Viability (whether it can be made to work in our environment – cost, ongoing support, scaling etc). Each card gives a narrative and may ask for tokens to proceed. The bottom of each card shows how much has been spent so far on the initiative and how many Growth Boards it has been coming back to.
Some of the initiatives are at the start of the development lifecycle, some are ready to launch (the card says ‘Launch’ on it) and some are in the middle. Some are tactical, some strategic. Once an initiative has been launched you will be instructed to roll a 12 sided dice to see how successful it was via an ‘update’ card.
Some of the reports are emotional, are written through optimistic, pessimistic, timid or arrogant viewpoints. Some are written by people who are seasoned Lean Start-up practitioners, some are not. So don’t take everything too literally. A bit like real life in that respect!
