Each team is the project team for “Aurora”, a product that must launch in 12 weeks. Every week they decide where their effort goes. The game quietly punishes teams that only build, and rewards teams that manage risk, people and stakeholders as real work — because on real projects, they are.
Read the mission together: 10 features, 12 weeks, RM500k. Point out the risk register. Say nothing about strategy — let them discover that all-build teams crash.
Each week the team places 6 effort tokens across five tracks and may protect against one named risk. Insist that they discuss before placing — the argument is the exercise.
The CEO demands an extra feature mid-project. Whether the team can negotiate depends on the stakeholder trust they built (or didn’t) in Weeks 1–5. This is the moment most debriefs centre on.
Compare grades, then ignore them. Ask each team: what did you sacrifice, and when did you decide it? Which risk did you see coming and choose to accept? What did stakeholder trust cost per week, and what did it buy at Week 6?
Scope, time and cost cannot all win. Strong teams choose their sacrifice early and out loud; weak teams let the deadline choose for them.
Every risk in the register is cheap to reduce before its window opens and expensive after it fires. Watch which teams read the register in Week 1 — and which discover it in Week 7.
Trust invested weekly is what makes “no” possible at the Board Event. Teams that skip it don’t lose points — they lose options.
Crunch buys speed now and pays it back with defects and slowdown later. The maths in the game mirrors the research on sustained overtime.