Skip to Content

Playing with Project Management

A startup called RedCritter turns software development into a game.
November 17, 2011

Software development projects are notorious for blowing past deadlines and through budgets, however managers try to track progress and motivate workers to hit milestones. A startup called RedCritter is taking a new approach, with software that turns the task of measuring performance and sticking to a schedule into something more like a game. And managing software projects is just the beginning. The company’s founder, veteran entrepreneur Mike Beaty, wants to apply these techniques to other business problems, like increasing sales leads and improving customer service.

Rewarding work: RedCritter Tracker encourages software developers to manage their time better with badges and points that can be redeemed for prizes.

RedCritter’s software, called Tracker, is currently designed to work specifically with so-called agile software development methods, in which programmers launch themselves into short, well-defined tasks called “scrums” that allow rapid improvement of code. Agile development is the programming method of choice for many startups, especially those developing Web-based systems. Tracker uses video-game-style points, badges, and a Twitter-style conversation stream to turn the often deadly boring business of managing a software project into something programmers can enjoy.

In order to earn points and badges in Tracker, programmers allow a certain level of surveillance over their work—everything from which task they’re working on to how long it takes them to complete it. These rewards give developers a tangible way to mark their progress—and encourage a little healthy competition.

U.K.-based game development company Matmi began using Tracker a few months ago. While it’s too early to tell if it’s had a positive effect on the bottom line, the software has allowed more visibility into what programmers are actually doing. “Not only can we monitor how the project is going, and make amendments to hit deadlines should any issues arise, but [Tracker] allows the whole team to claim their involvement in the project and show them how important a part they play,” says James Tibbles, head of development at Matmi.

See the rest of our Business Impact report on The Business of Games.

Tracker allows programmers to set up a page showing all their badges, much in the way that players of popular online games like World of Warcraft or Halo display their achievements. Tracker can award 50 different badges, from “newbies” that people get for exploring the software to ones earned by completing the most scrums in a single day.

Along with these badges, project leaders can award points for completion of certain tasks. Tracker features a “rewards store,” in which employees can exchange these points for goodies: Matmi’s rewards store offers an iPad, Nerf guns, coffee coupons, and other geek-friendly paraphernalia. As well as boosting morale, Tibbles says, “rewarding [employees] for the way they work makes them think more about how they spend their own work time, and helps them order their workload.”

For RedCritter, Tracker is just the beginning. Future plans include systems to “gamify” customer relations management and lead generation for sales. After all, Beaty says, many workers have come of age in a world of consumer technology like Twitter, Foursquare, and video games, and it has shaped their expectations of what work should be like.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.