The Project Win Game: A Serious Game for Project Management Simulation

"The Project Win Game" presents a board game developed by Maxmetrics GmbH to teach project management decision-making, with particular attention to the consequences of choosing between traditional waterfall and agile methodologies. The authors contend that existing serious games in this area tend to be limited to a single role, aimed at inexperienced students, or disconnected from real-world conditions, and that few examine how methodology selection shapes project outcomes. The game simulates a 33-week smartphone development project in which the methodology a player selects influences subsequent decisions, and competitive play is determined by accumulated value credits.

The authors report on eight validation sessions with practitioners and a prototype that cost roughly $460 to $600 per unit, with production runs of 20 to 30 units estimated at $10,000 to $20,000. Among the notable findings, waterfall-oriented players spend considerably more time in the planning phase, while agile players face a higher density of decisions, and the game must balance these differing play rhythms. Players were observed to focus primarily on reaching the end of the game and frequently neglected contingency planning. The authors conclude that the game supports learning in integration management, methodology selection, and value-driven management. However, a planned quantitative assessment of long-term learning impact has not yet been carried out, so claims about durable educational effects remain provisional.

The work is situated within a body of prior research on gamified training in information systems security, general project management theory, and educational games for Scrum, which together frame the game as an extension of established serious-game approaches in project management and software engineering education.