“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” — Ben Franklin
When I sat thinking about what makes for a successful Badgeville implementation, I thought of customers that impressed me and why they did. I analyzed these customers to understand what made their implementation successful, and I identified two key attributes they all had in common.
- They really know what’s going on with their Badgeville implementation.
- Most importantly, they document!
It sounds really simple. And it also stands to reason that number 1 is a result of number 2. But don’t worry if you haven’t diligently documented up to now—it’s never too late to start; today is a new day! It might not be the most fun project you’ll take on, but it doesn’t have to be this big, daunting task and it will pay off in spades. Start with just a small commitment, eventually it will all flow on its own. Keep the information concise, and examples plentiful.
The following areas are a great place to get started with documenting, and are highly helpful:
- Tips and Tricks
- Basic Troubleshooting
- Lessons Learned
- Important configurations specific to your implementation
Tips and tricks are easy to populate.
What gave you an “Aha!” moment or made working with Badgeville easier for you? Write it down! Did you conquer Berlin or Cairo APIs and come up with the perfect query to get helpful information? Throw your examples in writing with an explanation of uses. Your successors will think of you fondly if you wrap it up like a pretty present in Documentation.
Basic Troubleshooting…. Why didn’t that reward trigger?
Do you understand your configuration options and their implications? We have a wealth of information in our Badgeville Community that can help you. Often, these issues can be a product of misconfiguration or misinterpretation of configuration settings. As always, we’re happy to help here at Badgeville if you’re stumped. And, when you find solutions to common issues that can present a problem, they’re great to add to a checklist of things to rule out if anything arises in the future.
Lessons Learned are huge.
Did you make a change not knowing that the Badgeville implementation relied on it? Don’t worry, you weren’t the first! However, this is really good information to get down in documentation.
That leads to the last bullet point…
Important configurations specific to your implementation.
We do our best to stay intimately abreast of our clients’ unique configurations but things change as you take charge of your game. There are many reasons for why it’s good to keep records of changes, configurations and their purpose.
- It saves you time
- It expedites us getting up to speed on changes you’ve made when you need to engage us.
- Knowing the exact purpose makes for faster, more efficient workarounds when necessary.
With these pointers you should be able to get started documenting your gamification program in no time at all! Remember that you can never have too many examples, and to be as clear and concise in your writing as possible. At Badgeville we are committed to customer success and are also here to help if you ever get stumped. And – most importantly – the more detailed of documentation you keep on your implementation, the easier it is for others to fully understand how the it runs, allowing for your gamification program to live on and grow successfully for the long term.
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