It is a fun game to play both with individuals or teams.
— How to create cards?
You can find a template for Taboo cards under this link. ( At the beginning I have just used a Powerpoint / Keynote slides to create cards, which also worked fine).
Then it is time to prepare the cards.
— How many cards should be prepared?
If you gonna play the game with 1 team of approximately 6 people for one hour; then 50 cards is more than enough.
— What to write on cards?
This is the tricky and fun part. I have created some sections such as;
- Project Names: What are the projects that we work on?
- Team Names: Which teams do you recognize?
- Office Building: Which floor is the cafeteria located?
- People: Who are the directors?
- Agile Terms: In Scrum, to which meeting the stakeholders are invited?
- Covid-19 Facts: What should we be wearing? MASKS!
- Remote Work: Are you talking when you are muted?
In each section, I have created 30- 40 cards, in other words 30-40 words with 5 hint words placed under them. I screenshot every card and save them as .png file. Therefore whenever I want to play the game, I have the cards ready to play.
— How to play?
Set a Zoom/ Slack/ Google meeting with people and make sure their cameras are on.
First give an introduction and explain the game.
“The aim is to explain the word on the top of the card but without using any of the hint words. For every word explained, player gains 1 point and for every hint word that is said, s/he looses 1 point.”
After being sure that they have understood the game, then press the start button 🙂
I give 1 minute for one player and count how many cards s/he can explain in 1 minute. I send the cards to each player via Slack as an image (.png file). When the player gets the card, s/he starts to explain and it is done, I send the following card. If one hint word is used, then it is Taboo and the card is not valid anymore. Then I send another card again.
I keep the score by myself just by writing on a paper or on a notepad.
— Little Tricks
When I first play the game with people, I set the rule as; “Whoever is able to explain the word, gains the point”. However I have seen that there are people who knew the answer but did not tell it just because they didn’t want the other person to get extra point.
Then I re-set the rule such as; “Whoever is able to explain the word or give the right answer, gains the point”. Then it became a real challenge for people! However It became a little bit more difficult for me to keep the scores for each individual.
–The End
It was real fun for people and also they have learned so much.
It can be used as a team game just to cheer the team up but also as a part of an orientation process for new joiners or some departmental event to get people together, have fun and keep them informed about the some facts about the section they are working in.