We are going to play a game.

I need x amount of people (count about 1/3 of the group) to play a game. No worries, nothing scary 😉

They do not need to know everything yet!

You are the Users.

The App-Team made a brand new game for you to play.

You will play the game on a laptop. The goal is to score a total of 300 points with the highest 5 scores.

The game is easy, but there will be bugs. When a bug appears, you can create a ticket and send it to the App-Team.

• Communication is only possible through tickets
• The game will take about 10 minutes
• I will announce when we do a debrief
• When I say you can log in, do so — and the game starts immediately
• Behave as a proper user

Please move to another room. You do not need further instructions for now.

Please divide into two roughly equal teams:

• App Team (App Owners)
• Infra Team

You are responsible for the game and the user experience.

You receive all tickets from users.

• Send tickets back to users for more information
• Send tickets to Infra if it is infra-related
• Send tickets to the External Team if it is an external issue
• Click “debug” to attempt to solve the issue yourself

You are responsible for all infrastructure-related issues.

You will receive tickets from the App Team.

• Send tickets back to the App Team
• Send tickets to the External Team
• Run the pipeline to solve issues

• Solving within SLA: +20 points
• Solving outside SLA: +5 points
• Points are awarded to the solving team
• Every second a ticket is in your queue: -1 point
• Multiple tickets = multiple penalties
• Solving issues takes time
• Solve rate is 100% → if not solved, the ticket was not yours
• Communication only via tickets
• Players rotate when instructed

Open the laptop and select your team.

There is an automated external team.

If an issue belongs to them, they will solve it. Otherwise, it is returned.

I will act as the admin of the game 🙂 You don’t need to know more for now.

Show the war-room board.

What do you notice?

There are three scores — one per team — but only one truly matters:

The User Score.

Even if teams perform well individually, the App Team remains responsible for the user experience.

Did you delay passing tickets so another team would miss SLA?

The goal is to maximize service for the user — not to outperform other teams 😉