How to Test Your Engineers the Fun Way

After my team of American E3.series applications engineers had undergone a week of training, instead of a formal test, we decided to actually make it fun.  When are tests ever fun? I hear you thinking. Read on to find out how, and get ideas to implement within your own team.

If you’re a regular follower of this blog, by now you may have come to realize that it isn’t all about talking formally about engineering topics; we like to embrace the real-life side of the Zuken global organization. Our version of Hollywood Game Night (an American TV game show) complete with pizza, wings and a few pints of beer is the way to really test if the training has entered their frontal lobe and not just gone in one ear and drifted out of the other.

Thinking about testing your engineers? Here are some ideas for you to consider:

Games

Firstly, divide into two teams to introduce an element of competition and camaraderie, and don’t forget to allocate a host, judge, and score keeper (who is also there as a referee and to keep the peace).

• Pieceout

This is a head-to-head game involving the identification of design objects. A member of each team competes against each other to identify within 30 seconds the specific object displayed. I.e., a default TCP Port, to the 4712 object. You see, not as easy as it sounds huh?!

• Take the Hint

A guesser from each team is chosen, and the remaining team members have to give single-word clues to a topic or phrase. They have two minutes to guess the correct answer. I.e.,E3.eCheck: Functional Unit Types.

• Smash the Buzzer

Another head-to-head game like Pieceout, but when a team wins they can eliminate someone from the opposing team. Beware – this one is where controversy can ensue, and when your scorekeeper/ referee-come-peacekeeper has to exercise their powers.

• Lil’ (Little) AEs

A team game, where in advance you get young kids to draw what they thought a design symbol represented, then get the teams to guess from a multiple choice what they supposed the kids might have drawn when shown the symbol. There’s 10 seconds to select from the multiple choice options.

• Charades

You know this one right? This is when things tend to get all a bit abstract and crazy. The way we did it was to create a list of nine possible charades, each was a topic covered during the week (i.e., E3 simulation, E3.eCheck, Harness Builder for E3.series, E3.HarnessAnalyzer, E3.ZPA (Teamcenter), E3 Enterprise (MultiUser), E3.ZPA (Windchill) and E3.Fluid).

Why not give this approach a go next time you want to test a group of people on some training.