Risk simulation
Risk management simulator
Run your own software house: win tenders, learn your team's estimation biases and price risk with Tornado and Monte Carlo charts.
What is the Risk management simulator simulation?
The risk management simulator is a solo game in which you run a small project company. Across four levels and sixteen projects you win contracts: you see how your people estimate the effort, you quote a price for the tender and then you watch the project run. Everyone estimates differently - some are optimists, some pessimists, some simply unpredictable - and it is on you to learn their biases if you want to make money.
Quote too high and a competitor takes the tender; quote too low and you deliver the project at a loss. From the third level you get the analyst toolkit: the Tornado chart shows whose estimates drift the most, and Monte Carlo turns uncertainty into a distribution of costs from which you read the cost at a probability of 0.8. You can also buy counter-actions against risks, but their cost goes into the project budget. At the end you get a summary: how much of the achievable profit you captured and how each person on the team really works.
Features
Key capabilities
Tenders with a real price
You quote a price based on your team's estimates. Too high and a competitor takes the job, too low and you deliver below cost.
Your people’s estimation biases
Every person has their own optimism bias and their own spread. You learn them by comparing estimates with what the tasks really took.
Tornado and Monte Carlo
Tornado ranks whose estimates throw the project off the most, and Monte Carlo shows the cost distribution and the price for a probability you pick.
Counter-actions against risk
Before a project starts you buy actions that halve one person’s average error or spread - but you pay for them out of the budget.
Company results and quoting accuracy
Profit, balance, the cashflow of successive projects and the accuracy of every quote on one screen, plus a plan-versus-actual table you can export to CSV.
Sessions and a shared scoreboard
You open a session with a code, everyone plays their own run, and participants’ scores and progress show up live for the host.
Step by step
How it works
Open a session
Start a simulator session and hand the code to participants, or just play it yourself straight from your account.
Quote the project
Review your team's estimates, set the price of your offer and decide whether to invest in counter-actions.
Watch the project run
The simulation fast-forwards the tasks and shows you where the plan drifted away from reality.
Draw the conclusions
After every project the Tornado and Monte Carlo charts update, and at the end you get a verdict and a profile of your team.
Use cases
What it’s good for
- Training in quantitative risk management
- Learning to quote projects with a contingency for risk
- Practising how to read Tornado and Monte Carlo charts
- Showing what estimation bias and optimism bias really are
- Teach how to price projects with risk included
- A game about risk for project managers
- Show why a single estimate is never enough
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 “Risk management 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
Try “Risk management simulator” in Verbalu
Create a free account and run your first engaging session today. No card, no installation.