Agile Training Simulation for Teams

ScrumTale is an agile training simulation built around a story, not a slide deck. Teams write a crime story together over several Sprints, and the agile principles – iterative delivery, inspect-and-adapt, self-organization, fast feedback – show up on their own, because the team lives through them instead of hearing about them.

Why a story works as an agile simulation

Most agile simulations use a fixed, physical product: a Lego model, a paper plane, a tower of blocks. The result is predictable, so the team quickly learns to game the exercise instead of the process. A crime story has no single right answer. Requirements are ambiguous, “done” is a judgment call, and two people can genuinely disagree about what happens next – the same conditions that make real product development hard. That is what turns a game into a training simulation instead of a team-building icebreaker.

The agile principles teams practise

  • Iterative and incremental delivery – the story is built Sprint by Sprint, and each increment has to work with what came before.
  • Inspect and adapt – every Sprint Review and Retrospective changes how the team plans the next one.
  • Self-organization – there is no game master telling the team how to split the work.
  • Fast, honest feedback – a stakeholder reacts to the story as written, not to a plan for how it will be written.
  • Cross-functional collaboration – writing, plotting and continuity all have to come from the same small team.

The framework running underneath is Scrum – Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective – but the principles it teaches apply to any agile way of working, which is why L&D teams use ScrumTale for agile onboarding even outside strictly Scrum organisations.

Formats

The same simulation runs in three formats, so the choice is about logistics, not content.

  • ScrumTale Box – the full in-person workshop kit, for a facilitator running sessions on-site.
  • Online Edition – a Miro board template for remote and hybrid teams, run over a video call.
  • Do It Yourself Edition – printable files, the cheapest way to try the simulation before committing to the Box.

All three keep the same participant range (5-17 people) and the same 3-6 hour running time.

Who runs this simulation

  • Agile coaches and Scrum Masters who need a hands-on exercise for a training day, not another slide deck.
  • Corporate L&D teams onboarding a department to agile ways of working, including people with no technical background.
  • Certified ScrumTale trainers who run the simulation as a paid workshop for client teams.

Frequently asked questions

Is ScrumTale an agile simulation or specifically a Scrum simulation?
Both. The workshop runs on the Scrum framework – Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Retrospective – but what it trains is the underlying agile mindset: iterative delivery, inspect-and-adapt, self-organization and fast feedback. Teams that don’t formally run Scrum still learn principles that transfer directly to Kanban or any other agile way of working.
Do participants need agile experience before the workshop?
No. ScrumTale is designed to teach agile and Scrum from zero. It works equally well as a first introduction and as a refresher for people who already know the theory but have never felt why the events matter.
How is this different from a Lego or paper-plane agile simulation?
Physical build simulations have one correct output, so teams quickly learn to optimise the exercise instead of the process. Writing a crime story has no single right answer: requirements are ambiguous and “done” is a judgment call, which reproduces the real friction of product development – disagreement, unclear scope, integration problems – rather than a clean assembly task.
How long does the simulation take and how many people can join?
A full session runs 3-6 hours depending on how deep the debrief goes, with 5-17 participants per session. Larger groups run as two parallel teams of up to 8-9 each, so the format scales to a full training day.
Can we run it remotely with a distributed team?
Yes, through the Online Edition: a Miro board template used over a video call (Zoom, Teams or Meet). The facilitator needs a paid Miro plan (the Starter plan is enough); participants join through a shared link with no Miro account or download required.

Not sure which format fits your group? Get in touch or browse the shop.