Systems Thinking and System Dynamics: a systemic perspective for the PMBoG project (ENG)

The project’s scope is to teach project management skills through the creation of a Board Game.

A Board game is an educational tool that creates a common experiential and learning space, where the players will interact with each other and apply the learned concepts in a simulated (anyhow real-life-related) gaming environment. 

About the PMBoG project, the players will interact with each other in the common experiential and learning space in order to facilitate the development and learning of project management concepts.

In this context, Systems Thinking and System Dynamics will support learners with a number of concepts, principles, and tools that will allow understanding the collaborative, systemic and complex strategies associated with PM domains and that will be embedded in the board game elements and in the overall gameplay, hence determining their enhanced acquisitions by players.

System Thinking is a qualitative method that analyzes the relationship between the interrelated and interdependent parts of the Project (eco)system. The systemic approach to Project Management explains how changing one part of the system affects other parts and the whole system.

System Dynamics is a quantitative method that allows representing the relationships among system parts through a rigorous mathematical language and simulates the overall system behaviour.

Especially in the field of project management, the joint use of Systems Thinking and System Dynamics is highly beneficial in the process of uncovering, illustrating, and teaching the characteristics of the archetypical structures underlying the general PM process and managed in each PM intervention.