Piggybank Scrum Simulation

As one of the most popular agile frameworks Scrum has a certain workflow and more and more companies decide to go agile. Nevertheless how to explain that workflow the first time? How about to use a simulation to make people experience the basic workflow of Scrum.

People new to agility need an understanding of the different roles, artifacts and events within Scrum plus the inherent Kaizen structure. In the simulation the participants experience the improving of their teams. In playing the Piggybank Scrum Simulation the participants learn in a fun way about the Scrum Cycles.

The Piggybank Scrum Simulation has been set up by PaulS and can be found on tastycupcakes.org with an extensive description. We took the part for the participants out and into the MIRO board – following his instructions.

The Scrum Simulation is focusing on the workflow – from Planning to Build phase to Review (or Demo) and finally to Retrospective – and tp learn that this setup of Scrum is bound to let teams improve. Especially when playing with several teams the participants find their own - very similar findings.

The target group to play with are people who get introduced to Scrum. But it can also include team members who already know a bit about or worked with Scrum.

How to use The Piggybank Scrum Simulation Board

The Piggybank Scrum Simulation is quite easy going. At the beginning make sure your participants understand the objective of the exercise. Count in about 15 minutes to explain the rules and group them up to teams of 6-7 persons and let them define who is going to be Scrum Master and who the Product Owner. Also which team gets which color.

After all questions about the game have been answered the teams start playing the game – each on their color board. The teams act self-organized and should take care of the time on their own.

After three sprints – from Planning to Build phase to Review (or Demo) and finally to Retrospective – collect the results with all the teams and start the debrief. According questions for the debrief can be found on the board.

The Debrief shold focus on the findings about the workflow and what the participants experienced.

Have fun playing the Piggybank Scrum Simulation.