New game based on Reinertsen's principles

Teaching mathematical concepts late in the afternoon can be tiresome for the students.

I have just finished the design of a game for my Product Owner / Product Manager course (latest version, premiere on this monday in collaboration with Informator). From the game you can learn a couple of Don Reinertsen's economic principles from the book The Principles of Product Development Flow. It is one of my favorite books, about how you prioritize in a sound economical way in lean and agile development.

The game teaches the concept of Weighted Shortest Job First (that is one of the principles of SAFe), and also teaches (by introducing random factors) the importance of being prepared to handle variation and the dangers of trying to maximize resource utilization. It is a simulation of 12 weeks in a software development department where the release date moves closer and closer while the scope is being fixed...

I have tried it out using people at my company, Squeed and they were quite happy. Among them are people very interested in strategic board games, and they felt that the game is actually interesting from a gamer's perspective (about optimizing a schedule), not only from a learner's perspective (even if it actually teaches the tricky concepts of the book quite well).