PMBoG

Funding programme

Erasmus+ KA204 – Strategic Partnerships for Adult Education

Project reference

2020-1-IT02-KA204-079724

Period

2020–2022

Coordinating organisation

Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

Participating countries

Italy, Germany, Greece

Official project website

Visit official website

PMBoG aimed to improve project management literacy and practical decision-making skills through an experiential learning approach combining theoretical instruction, a purpose-designed board game and interactive simulation environments.

The project sought to help learners understand not only formal project management principles but also the dynamic relationships, uncertainties and unintended consequences that influence project performance.

Specific learning objectives

• Project planning: Develop the ability to define objectives, identify activities, organise tasks, establish priorities and coordinate successive stages of a project.
• Time management: Understand project scheduling, deadlines, task dependencies and the consequences of delays on overall performance.
• Budget and resource management: Practise allocating financial and human resources while balancing costs, available capacity and project requirements.
• Risk management: Identify potential risks, anticipate adverse events, evaluate mitigation strategies and understand the consequences of insufficient preventive action.
• Project quality and stakeholder satisfaction: Recognise the importance of meeting client requirements while respecting financial and operational constraints.
• Systems thinking: Develop an understanding of the interdependencies, feedback mechanisms and nonlinear relationships that influence project outcomes.
• Decision-making under uncertainty: Encourage learners to evaluate alternatives, anticipate consequences and adapt their strategies to changing circumstances.
• Problem-solving and critical thinking: Strengthen the ability to analyse complex situations, identify constraints and develop appropriate responses to project-related challenges.
• Communication and interpersonal skills: Provide opportunities for negotiation, interaction, strategic discussion and learning through the observation of other players’ decisions.
• Project management professional development: Familiarise participants with principles and practices that can be transferred to academic, organisational and professional environments.

By combining project management theory with practical gaming experiences, PMBoG sought to make the discipline accessible to both specialists and individuals without extensive previous experience in managing projects.

PMBoG developed an original educational board game entitled Project Management Board Game (PMBoG), designed to introduce project management principles through an accessible and competitive simulation of a real-world project.

Game developed

1. Project Management Board Game (PMBoG)

Players assume the role of wedding planners responsible for organising a wedding according to the requirements of a specific couple. Each player manages an individual project while competing with other players for resources and attempting to achieve the highest overall performance.

The wedding scenario was selected because it provides a familiar context involving planning, scheduling, budgets, suppliers, quality requirements, stakeholder satisfaction and unforeseen events.

Main game characteristics

• Number of players: 2–4.
• Playing time: Approximately 75–90 minutes in the documented university sessions, although duration varies according to the number of players and their familiarity with the rules.
• Game structure: Six rounds representing six months of project development.
• Player role: Project manager responsible for organising a wedding.
• Individual objectives: Each player receives a couple card containing specific preferences and requirements that influence final scoring.
• Project planning: Players organise activities on individual project boards representing a simplified Gantt-style planning system.
• Task management: Players must complete six categories of activities associated with wedding preparation, including location, ceremony arrangements, clothing, invitations, rings and photography.
• Worker management: Players allocate assistants and other workers to planned activities. Workers have different characteristics and may be hired temporarily or improved through training.
• Risk and uncertainty: Activities may generate adverse events, represented through dice and risk-related mechanisms. Players can invest resources in preventive measures to reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes.
• Budget management: Financial resources are used to obtain activities, employ workers and mitigate risks. Exceeding the available budget can negatively affect final scoring.
• Competition: Players compete to complete their projects efficiently and satisfy the requirements of their respective clients.
• Adjustable difficulty: Optional gameplay elements can be introduced or excluded to adapt complexity to players’ abilities and experience.

Game mechanics

The game combines action selection, worker allocation, resource management, task scheduling, set collection, dice-based risk resolution and individual objectives.

Its educational design links player decisions with project management principles. For example, hiring additional workers increases operational capacity but requires resources, while risk mitigation reduces uncertainty at an additional financial cost.

Game development

The game was developed by the project consortium, with Ergo Ludo Editions leading the physical game design and development. Other partners contributed expertise in project management, systems thinking, simulation and educational methodology.

Availability

The game was released as a print-and-play educational resource, accompanied by a manual and printable components. An online tabletop version was also published on Tabletopia.

Official resources:

• PMBoG – Official board game page
• PMBoG – Official game documentation and printable materials
• PMBoG – Tabletopia version

Game approach: Custom-designed educational board game.

PMBoG adopts an experiential Board Game-Based Learning methodology that combines project management theory, analogue gameplay, systems thinking and reflection on managerial decisions.

The project was designed around the idea that project management involves complex interactions between time, resources, budgets, risks and stakeholder expectations. Rather than treating these elements as isolated theoretical concepts, PMBoG incorporates them into an interconnected game system.

Methodological approach

1. Theoretical preparation: Learners are introduced to fundamental project management concepts through conventional educational resources, including written materials and explanations of project planning, resource allocation, risk management and related principles.
2. Introduction to the game: The facilitator explains the wedding-planning scenario, the objectives, the available actions and the relationship between the game’s components and project management processes.
3. Project planning: Players analyse their individual client’s requirements, select activities and organise their project schedules using a planning board inspired by Gantt charts.
4. Decision-making and resource allocation: During gameplay, participants decide how to allocate workers, spend financial resources, execute tasks, develop staff competences and manage operational constraints.
5. Risk management: Players encounter uncertain events and must decide whether preventive investments are justified by the potential consequences of failure.
6. Monitoring and adaptation: As the game progresses, players observe the results of their decisions and adapt subsequent actions according to available resources, remaining time and outstanding project objectives.
7. Project completion and assessment: At the end of the sixth round, players evaluate project outcomes against client requirements, completed activities, financial performance and other scoring criteria.
8. Reflection and knowledge transfer: The educational approach provides opportunities to connect gameplay experiences with project management principles, particularly the interdependencies and unintended consequences of managerial decisions.

Game session structure

The board game consists of six rounds representing six months of project development. Each round includes a preparation phase followed by an action phase.

During the action phase, players take turns selecting from several possible actions, including planning tasks, hiring temporary workers, preventing risks, executing activities, training workers or passing.

Each round ends when all players have passed. The game concludes after the sixth round, when participants calculate their final scores according to project completion, client preferences and financial performance.

In the published 2024 evaluation, five game sessions were organised across two days, involving groups of three or four students. Each session lasted approximately 75 minutes.

Facilitator’s role

The facilitator introduces the game, explains its rules, answers questions and supports participants in understanding the available decisions and project management constraints.

In the documented university evaluation, explanations were delivered by a senior student previously involved in the project. The session structure consisted of rule explanation, responses to participants’ questions, gameplay and game completion.

The game’s optional elements also allow facilitators to adjust the difficulty according to participants’ experience and familiarity with project management concepts.

Reflection and debriefing

Reflection is an important component of the project’s broader educational rationale. The consortium intended learners to analyse the consequences of their decisions and understand how project outcomes emerge from interactions between different variables.

The research published in 2023 explicitly describes structured reflection and debriefing supported by systems thinking. However, this study concerns the project’s digital simulation environment rather than the physical board game.

The 2024 board game evaluation documents rule explanation, gameplay and subsequent assessment, but does not establish a separately standardised and evaluated debriefing procedure for the physical game.

Therefore, while facilitated reflection is consistent with PMBoG’s educational design, evidence from the digital simulation should not be presented as proof that the same debriefing methodology was systematically applied during the board game intervention.

Distinctive methodological feature

PMBoG translates project management principles into the decisions required during gameplay. Time pressure, resource constraints, risk mitigation, workforce capacity and stakeholder satisfaction are not merely topics discussed after the game; they are integral elements of the game system itself.

This intrinsic relationship between educational concepts and game mechanics is particularly relevant for teaching complex managerial processes through experiential learning.

PMBoG was developed through a European partnership combining universities, project management specialists, systems thinking experts, adult education organisations and professional board game designers.

The project produced an original board game, theoretical resources and an interactive computer-based simulation environment. Its implementation and evaluation were subsequently documented in scientific publications.

Implementation

• European partnership: The consortium consisted of seven organisations from Italy, Germany and Greece, coordinated by Sapienza University of Rome.
• Educational development: The project combined theoretical project management materials, professional standards, systems dynamics modelling and practical game design.
• Game production: Ergo Ludo Editions led the development of the physical board game, while other partners contributed technical, educational and project management expertise.
• Board game dissemination: The completed game and its documentation were made available as public educational resources, including printable materials and an online tabletop version.
• Digital simulation: A separate interactive learning environment was developed using systems dynamics models to simulate project management decisions and their consequences.
• University implementation: The physical board game was tested through organised sessions involving undergraduate management engineering students.
• Scientific dissemination: Two peer-reviewed publications examined different project outputs: a 2023 study of the digital simulation environment and a 2024 comparative study of the physical board game.

Evaluation of the physical board game: Armenia et al. (2024)

A comparative educational study was published in The International Journal of Management Education in 2024.

The study involved 44 third-year undergraduate students enrolled in Management Engineering, divided into an experimental group of 19 students who played PMBoG and a comparison group of 25 students who did not participate in the game sessions.

Participants in the experimental group were recruited voluntarily, and five game sessions were organised over two days. Each session lasted approximately 75 minutes and involved three or four players.

After the intervention, students in both groups completed a 14-item multiple-choice assessment addressing practical project management situations, including time management, risk management, communication, costs, project phases and general management principles.

The assessment was designed to evaluate the ability to identify appropriate decisions in project management situations rather than merely recall theoretical definitions.

Quantitative findings

• Experimental group: 19 students; mean test score of 7.32 out of 14.
• Comparison group: 25 students; mean test score of 5.20 out of 14.
• Between-group difference: 2.12 points in favour of students who participated in the game sessions.
• Statistical significance: The authors reported a statistically significant difference between the two groups using a comparison of means.
• Effect size: The publication reports an effect size of 0.72, interpreted by the authors as a medium-to-high effect. The calculation method should be independently verified before treating this figure as a definitive standardised effect estimate.
• Gender comparisons: Additional analyses did not identify a statistically significant difference between male and female participants in the game group. However, these findings should be interpreted cautiously because of the small subgroup sizes.

Player experience and perceived learning

Students who played PMBoG completed additional questions about their experience.

• Playing experience: Mean rating of 7.8 out of 10.
• Enjoyment: Mean rating of 8.3 out of 10.
• Perceived learning: Mean ratings of approximately 6 out of 10 for questions addressing improvement in project management knowledge and skills.

Participants generally appreciated the game’s educational concept, strategic demands and recreational value. However, some reported difficulties with the initial explanation, complexity of certain procedures, limited interaction with opponents and aspects of gameplay that were perceived as insufficiently intuitive.

Evaluation of the digital simulation: Barnabè et al. (2023)

A separate study published in Systems evaluated the project’s online system dynamics-based interactive learning environment.

The study involved six doctoral students who used a single-player simulation of wedding project management. The researchers analysed in-game performance, participant feedback and decisions related to project dynamics.

The study explored the potential of simulation and systems thinking-supported reflection to facilitate critical thinking. Its findings concern the digital environment and should be distinguished from the evaluation of the physical board game.

Evidence classification

Physical board game: Published comparative study reporting significantly higher immediate project management assessment scores among participants, with methodological limitations associated with self-selection, small sample size and the absence of a pre-intervention learning assessment.

Digital simulation: Published exploratory study documenting learner experiences and decision-making processes in a small sample, without demonstrating a controlled effect on critical thinking.

Limitations

The 2024 board game evaluation involved only 44 students from a single educational background, and participation in the game sessions was voluntary rather than randomly assigned.

The study primarily compared post-intervention performance, limiting its ability to establish whether observed differences resulted exclusively from gameplay rather than pre-existing differences between groups.

The assessment focused on immediate project management knowledge and situational decisions. Long-term retention, professional transfer and changes in actual workplace performance were not evaluated.

Despite these limitations, PMBoG provides more direct quantitative evidence of educational outcomes than projects documenting only resource development, workshops or participant satisfaction.

PMBoG provides a collection of educational resources designed to support the teaching of project management through theoretical learning, physical gameplay and computer-based simulation.

Available resources

• PMBoG – Complete print-and-play board game: The final Intellectual Output 6 includes the game’s rules, descriptions of its mechanics and printable components, enabling educators and other users to reproduce the physical game.
• Game manual: Detailed instructions explaining preparation, player objectives, task management, worker allocation, project scheduling, risk resolution, budgeting and final scoring.
• Printable game components: Resources include player boards, task cards, couple cards, utility cards, markers, counters and other elements required for gameplay. Standard dice and suitable replacements for physical pieces may also be needed.
• Tabletopia version: A digital tabletop adaptation allows users to access the board game through an online platform, subject to the platform’s access requirements.
• Theory of Project Management: Educational materials covering fundamental concepts, terminology, project planning, management competencies and practical tools.
• Project management standards: Documentation examining established project management frameworks and certifications, including their potential integration into game-based learning activities.
• Project case-study documentation: Resources describing the selection and development of the project scenario used in the board game and simulation environments.
• Interactive Learning Environment: A separate computer-based simulation developed using systems dynamics principles, enabling learners to experiment with project management decisions and observe their consequences.
• Systems thinking resources: Publications and learning materials exploring feedback mechanisms, complex systems, project delays and the dynamic relationships between managerial decisions and performance.
• Scientific publications: Peer-reviewed studies published in 2023 and 2024 examining the project’s interactive simulation environment and physical board game, respectively.

Transferability

The publication of the complete physical game as a printable resource facilitates its reproduction and use outside the original consortium.

The game’s relatively familiar wedding-planning scenario allows learners without extensive professional project management experience to engage with the underlying challenges.

Optional gameplay elements also enable educators to adjust complexity according to the intended audience.

The complementary theoretical materials and simulation environment provide additional opportunities for integrating the board game into broader educational programmes.

Replicability assessment

PMBoG offers a comparatively high level of game-level replicability because its rules, components and underlying mechanics are publicly documented.

The 2024 scientific publication also describes the experimental groups, session duration, assessment procedure and principal quantitative results, facilitating methodological appraisal and partial replication of the educational study.

However, reproducing the original findings would require appropriate assessment procedures, comparable participant groups and access to sufficiently detailed research materials.

Official resources: PMBoG – Publications and intellectual outputs.

Complete game: Download the board game, rules and printable materials.

PMBoG represents a particularly relevant example of Board Game-Based Learning because it combines intrinsic integration between learning objectives and game mechanics, professional game design, publicly available educational resources and a published comparative evaluation of learning outcomes.

Unlike projects that document only the production of an educational game or participant satisfaction, PMBoG provides empirical data comparing the performance of students who participated in gameplay with that of a group that did not.

Methodological strengths

1. Intrinsic integration of educational content and game mechanics. Project management principles are embedded directly into the decisions players must make. Scheduling, budget allocation, workforce management, risk mitigation and stakeholder satisfaction are not external educational activities but essential elements of gameplay.
2. Representation of complex systems. The game draws on systems thinking and systems dynamics principles to represent interdependencies between managerial decisions and project outcomes. This is particularly relevant because project management requires understanding how actions in one area can generate consequences elsewhere.
3. Accessible and familiar narrative. The decision to use wedding planning as the central scenario is methodologically interesting. A familiar situation makes it possible to introduce complex project management principles without requiring detailed prior knowledge of a specialised professional sector.
4. Meaningful strategic decisions. Players must evaluate trade-offs between competing objectives. Hiring additional workers can increase productivity but raises costs, while investing in risk mitigation reduces uncertainty at the expense of other resources. These decisions connect strategic gameplay with authentic managerial challenges.
5. Adjustable difficulty. The possibility of introducing or removing advanced gameplay elements supports differentiated educational implementation and may allow the game to be used with learners possessing different levels of previous knowledge.
6. Professional game design. The participation of Ergo Ludo Editions reflects an effort to develop a functional recreational board game rather than simply transform educational questions into a game-like activity.
7. Documented recreational appeal. The 2024 study reported positive evaluations of the experience and enjoyment, with mean ratings of 7.8 and 8.3 out of 10, respectively. These findings provide preliminary evidence that participants found the activity enjoyable, although they do not establish sustained recreational use outside educational settings.
8. Comparative evaluation of learning outcomes. The project is particularly noteworthy for the 2024 study comparing 19 students who played PMBoG with 25 students who did not. The experimental group achieved significantly higher scores in a project management assessment, providing more substantial evidence than descriptive implementation reports alone.
9. Open and reproducible game materials. The availability of complete printable components and rules facilitates the replication of the game by educators and organisations beyond the original consortium.

Methodological limitations

Despite these strengths, the empirical evidence requires careful interpretation.

1. Non-random allocation and self-selection. Participation in the game sessions was voluntary. Consequently, students who chose to participate may have differed from non-participants in motivation, interest in games, engagement or other characteristics potentially related to learning performance.

2. Absence of a baseline learning assessment. The study compared post-intervention scores but did not establish equivalent initial project management competence through a validated pre-test. Therefore, the observed between-group difference cannot be attributed exclusively to gameplay with the same confidence as in a randomised controlled pre-test/post-test design.

3. Limited sample size and generalisability. The evaluation involved 44 students from a relatively homogeneous management engineering background. Additional studies would be needed to determine whether the findings extend to other educational levels, professional groups and adult learners.

4. Restricted outcome measurement. Learning was assessed through a 14-item multiple-choice test focused on situational project management decisions. Although relevant to the game’s objectives, this instrument cannot fully measure complex professional competences such as leadership, negotiation, teamwork or real-world project performance.

5. Unverified long-term effects. The study evaluated immediate performance rather than knowledge retention, subsequent application or sustained improvement in professional project management competencies.

6. Effect size reporting. The authors report a standardised effect size of 0.72. However, the calculation presented in the article appears to use a variance rather than the conventional pooled standard deviation required for Cohen’s d. This estimate should therefore be independently verified before being used as a definitive measure of effect magnitude.

7. Gameplay usability. Although the overall experience was positively evaluated, some participants reported difficulties understanding the initial explanation, concerns about complexity and insufficient opportunities for direct interaction with opponents.

8. Distinction between physical and digital interventions. The project produced both a board game and a computer-based interactive simulation. Their educational outcomes must be evaluated separately, since evidence from one format cannot automatically be transferred to the other.

Ludus Magnus assessment

PMBoG is a particularly valuable case for the European Board-Game-Based Learning Observatory because it combines well-documented game design with a published comparative educational evaluation.

Its central design principle is especially relevant: the educational objectives are represented through decisions that players must make in order to succeed. The game therefore provides opportunities for learning through the management of consequences rather than through the simple reproduction of theoretical knowledge.

The project also illustrates the potential advantages of collaborating with professional board game designers. By considering recreational quality and educational objectives together, the consortium attempted to create a game that could function both as a teaching resource and as a standalone recreational experience.

However, the study also demonstrates why educational effectiveness, participant enjoyment and methodological validity should be treated as separate dimensions.

The reported differences in learning performance are encouraging, but the non-randomised design, small sample and limited assessment instruments prevent definitive causal conclusions.

From a research perspective, PMBoG would be a strong candidate for further replication using randomised allocation, baseline and follow-up assessments, validated instruments and larger samples from different educational and professional backgrounds.

Transferable methodological lesson: Educational board games can be particularly promising when authentic disciplinary problems are translated into meaningful game decisions, and when their effectiveness is evaluated through objective learning measures rather than satisfaction alone. Nevertheless, robust experimental designs and transparent statistical reporting remain essential for determining the educational impact attributable to gameplay.