Experiencing the Challenges of Data Warehouse Development: Implementation of a Serious Game

Serious games have been used in education for decades. Playing increases motivation and engagement, fundamental components of the learning process. This paper presents the design and prototype implementation of an information technology strategy game called Emerge2Maturity. The game is about data warehouse development challenges. The game framework combines selection of a data warehouse architecture and assessment of related capabilities. We developed a prototype implementation using a storyboard concept and embedded Microsoft Excel sheet. Although data warehouse development is complex, the game is designed to capture important tradeoffs. The paper describes the details of the game design, show examples of the implementation and explain how the game is going to be evaluated.