Teaching agile by simulating real-world delivery

Summary

The challenge

The CHHS Office of Innovation had been working to adopt agile principles, but struggled to translate those concepts into day-to-day practice.

While teams understood individual elements of agile — such as planning, testing, and iteration — they found it difficult to connect them into a cohesive delivery approach. This gap made it harder to apply agile effectively to real projects and limited the organization’s ability to realize its full benefits.

To succeed, the team needed more than instruction — they needed a way to experience agile as a complete, integrated system.

The solution

We partnered with CivicActions to design and deliver a two-day immersive training experience centered on learning by doing.

Instead of relying on lectures, we simulated five full sprints within a compressed, two-day timeframe. Participants worked through a real-world scenario — improving the Office of Innovation’s website — and applied core Scrum practices, including planning, story writing, estimation, velocity tracking, and testing.

This approach allowed participants to:

• Experience how agile practices work together as a system
• Build intuition for decision-making in fast-moving delivery environments
• Identify gaps and opportunities in their own processes
• Apply what they learned immediately to a real product

By combining structured simulation with coaching, the workshop created both a meaningful learning experience and a tangible improvement to an existing product.

The results

• Enabled teams to confidently apply agile practices in real delivery scenarios
• Delivered a redesigned and improved version of the Office of Innovation’s website through hands-on sprint work
• Increased alignment and shared understanding of agile across participants

We had been training on agile for some time, and before, we understood all the ingredients. But this workshop brought all the ingredients together and showed us how to bake a cake.

Tamara Srzentic, Deputy Director, Office of Innovation at CHHS

As people in the government realize the value and power of the agile process, it’s important to understand that the principles of agile are key. This class teaches people how to get the benefits of agile without being dogmatic. My staff said they have been through multiple agile trainings, but none were as valuable and practical as this. They’re now comfortable adjusting the process to fit their needs and the culture of the department they’re helping.

Chaeny Emanavin, Director, Office of Innovation at CHHS