Simulation Games in the Project Management
Environment
Juan L. Cano, Ruben Rebollar, Maria J. Saenz
Project Engineering Area. Faculty of Engineering. University of Zaragoza
E-mail: jlcano@posta. unizar. es, rebollar@posta. unizar. es, mjsaenz@posta. unizar. es
Key words: simulation games, project management, negociation, training tool, role-
playing.
Abstract: The paper describes and analyses the experiences obtained in the development
of PROSIGA and TRAINER games in the project management environment.
The benefits of using simulation games are presented, as well as the outlooks
for further work with this type oftools. Different aspects of the games
development process are commented and specifically the overall effort
involved is exposed.
1. NEED
The increasing introduction of project management philosophy in
industry, clearly shown by the tremendous increase in the number of official
members of the PMI (Project Management Institute), IPMA (International
Project Management Association) and AIPM (Australian Institute of Project
Management), is a good indicator of the growing training demand in this
field. It is necessary to provide ways to experiment in which it is possible to
act out the management of a project.
In order to learn how to manage a project, the best method is to manage
it. For that reason, a series of tools has been developed that, by means of
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been
corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI:
© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2000
J. O. Riis et al. (eds.), Games in Operations Management
10.1007/978-0-387-35506-1_17