Agile team simulation
Agile simulator
Lead an agile team through four sprints on a Kanban board. Tasks with a value and an effort flow into the backlog, you drag them through analysis, production and testing, move people to the bottlenecks and watch the CFD, velocity, burndown and burnup charts draw themselves live. Then you play again, after reading the best practices, and compare both results.
What is the Agile simulator simulation?
The Agile simulator is a solo training game ported from Octigo's classic Agile Game. The participant becomes the leader of an agile team: tasks with an effort in hours and a business value in dollars appear in the backlog, and the colour of a card says how much value one hour of work brings. Tasks are dragged column by column and people are moved between three teams. Time runs by itself, but it can be slowed down, stopped or told to pause at the end of every day.
Things happen during the game as in a real project: the CEO raises a task's value, a customer gives up, the team changes an estimate, a specialist leaves when motivation drops, the sponsor asks for a special task, and tasks nobody had time for disappear from the backlog. After four sprints the participant gets a result and a verdict, reads the Kanban best practices and plays the whole scenario again. The closing step compares both runs: value, effort, velocity, lead time and two before/after charts. The trainer watches a live ranking of every participant on the projector.
See how it works
One day on the board: a task walks through the columns, a person walks to the bottleneck
Backlog
B 21 h 64 $C 32 h 23 $D 39 h 12 $Analyze
M 8 h 24 $In progress
E 11 h 17 $Test
L 15 h 30 $K 9 h 33 $Done
A 25 h 10 $The CEO raised the value of task F to 70 $
Features
Key capabilities
A Kanban board with real flow
Backlog, Analyze, In progress, Test, Done. A task's progress depends on the people in the column and the number of parallel tasks, so multitasking really slows things down and the WIP limit really helps.
People you move around
Three teams above the columns, every person a draggable figure. An effectiveness dial and a motivation bar show whether a team works at full speed, is bored or is drowning in tasks.
Time under the player's control
A speed slider, a Stop switch and a mode that pauses time at the end of every day, to re-plan the backlog and the teams calmly. A refreshed browser comes back to the same day.
Events like in a project
Changing values and estimates, a specialist leaving when motivation is low, a new person in the team, a sponsor's special task to accept or decline, a customer withdrawing tasks nobody had time for.
Four live reports
The cumulative flow diagram, velocity per sprint, release and sprint burndown and the burnup chart are drawn from the player's decisions, each with an explanation and a table view.
Two runs and a comparison
After the first run the participant reads the Kanban best practices and plays again. The closing step compares both runs with numbers and charts, and the result lands on the session's shared leaderboard.
Step by step
How it works
Open a session
Create an Agile simulator session or add it to an event agenda. Show the code or the QR code on the projector.
Participants play
Everyone joins on their own device, reads the rules and leads their team through four sprints. You see live who is in which sprint and how much they have delivered.
Best practices and a second round
After the first run the game shows the result and the Kanban rules: WIP limit, priority by value, people to the bottlenecks. Then the same scenario is played again.
Debrief the comparison
The closing step sets both runs side by side. You have the ranking on the projector and every participant has their own before/after charts. Ready material for the debrief.
Use cases
What it’s good for
- Kanban and Scrum training: WIP limits, flow and prioritising by value, experienced first-hand.
- An introduction to agile metrics: CFD, velocity, burndown and burnup read off your own decisions, not off a slide.
- A workshop for project managers about bottlenecks and multitasking.
- Onboarding new members of agile teams, also inside a self-paced course.
- University classes in project management with the group's ranking on the projector.
- An energiser during training: ten minutes of play, then a comparison of results and a discussion.
White label
Your brand for participants
On the paid plans you can add your company name, logo and colors, and during every session participants will see your brand instead of Verbalu.
Training by Octigo
Want this run as a full training?
You are free to run our games and simulations on your own. But if you would like us to deliver a complete training, with a professional debrief and the concepts behind the “Agile simulator” simulation explained in depth, get in touch. Octigo is a professional training company with 20 years of experience and many awards for its simulations.
- 20 years of experience in corporate training
- Award-winning training simulations
- A professional debrief and takeaways after the session
- A programme tailored to your goals and your team
Prefer to write to us directly? szkolenia@octigo.pl
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