This is based on a game that I developed over many years to illustrate in a hopefully entertaining way some of the dangers and pitfalls of Scrum!
In this game three teams - Blue, Green and Yellow - are working on a release/planning increment - whatever terminology you prefer. It consists of 8 iterations and the aim is to get as much high priority work done as possible. The Blue and Green teams are dedicated to this initiative but the Yellow team are a Shared Team who are working on several other things. Some of the stories in the backlog can be done without the Yellow Team but where a Story is Shared then it can only be allocated to this team. Remember that the Story Point estimates are not representing just effort - they represent effort, complexity and risk so it makes sense to reduce this risk where possible before getting the teams to commit to it within an iteration. If you're playing on your own you can think of yourself as the Product Owner but if there's more then assign a Scrum Master and have a conversation as you play!
There are three phases to each iteration -
During the Planning phase you will be able to move items from the Backlog onto one of the teams workload for the iteration. You will also be able to move items from the team's workload back to the backlog. You can also move stories in the backlog to the top or bottom if you wish to prioritise them or make them a non-priority.
Stories that are larger than 5sp will have a Breakdown/Spike option - you may be able to get the team to breakdown a larger story into smaller stories, these may total more or less than the large story, it will depend on what the team find. The team may require to do a "Spike story" before they understand enough about the large story to be able to break it down.
Please note that for broken down items, their split components will occupy the same part of the backlog where the larger story was, for example, a 13sp story in position 6 on the backlog when broken down into 8sp and 5sp stories, these stories will be at position 6 and 7 on the backlog.
Spike stories and any raised defects will initially be placed at the bottom of the backlog
Once you've allocated items for the iteration to the teams and broken down items where possible you can then execute the iteration by pressing the "Execute" button in the summary frame.
During the Execution phase the teams workloads will be assessed and the result will be displayed in the summary frame. The amount that each team has is an important aspect, the risk of carry-over and/of generation of defects will increase depending on the teams workload relative to its velocity. If the team is committing to a workload that is at or below its velocity this is the least risk, above its velocity is higher risk and significantly above even higher risk.
The Iteration Summary will state whether a given item was Done, Carried-Over and/or whether defects were raised.
To progress to the Review/Retrospective phase select the "Retrospective" button in the summary frame.
During the Review/Retrospective phase you will be presented with various statistics - and these can help you to decide on how to approach the next iteration. You will also be asked to decide how to calculate velocity for the teams - you can either choose an average velocity calculation or "Yesterday's weather" which is to simply use the velocity achieved in the previous iteration to base planning for the next iteration.
To move to the next iteration select the "Next Iteration" button in the summary frame.
It is entirely up to in deciding which strategy to adopt. You could be cautious and give the teams the maximum possible chance of completing their workload, or you could decide to stretch their workloads and see how much you can get completed. You can decide to breakdown everything as much as possible, or only breakdown the larger Epics and leave some larger items as they are.
The choice is yours - good luck and it you enjoy this game then please complete the feedback form provided at the end. I'll be discussing any updates etc on my blog so please feel free to look here