Whether you’re running a big or small event, a one-off, or a regular technical exercise program, strong planning paves the way for a great exercise experience.
While scheduling a Team Sim exercise in the Immersive Labs platform is very straightforward, I’m sharing a list of recommendations and tips for making sure your exercise goes the extra mile:
1. Define exercise objectives
Know the purpose of the exercise to keep a laser focus and stop scope creep, which can dilute the exercise experience and learning takeaways. Is this a fun exercise that will encourage engagement, or is it a capability assurance exercise? Knowing your objective is essential for effective planning. For example, a fun exercise might include more guidance and hints than a capability assurance exercise.
2. Block out calendars in advance
Identify your participant list as early as possible and send placeholders out to ensure the team’s availability. The more advance notice, the better. At a minimum, provide two weeks’ notice, but ideally one month. In some large-scale cases, whole Team Sim exercise programs are planned and booked out over six months in advance.
3. Host a briefing session
These sessions provide a great chance to set the expectations and objectives of the exercise, communicate important exercise information, answer any questions, and, most importantly, get the team excited about it! We recommend organizing a briefing call the week before the exercise.
4. Run a systems test
The last thing you’ll want to deal with when your exercise launches is any dreaded technical issues. Make sure you run a systems test early in the planning stages, leaving plenty of time for your organization to make any required configuration changes. You can find system requirement details here.
5. Assign preparation labs
Some of the catalog exercises may use security tools unfamiliar to your organization. I believe in the benefits of vendor-agnostic learning when it comes to skills development, but understand that unfamiliar tools can be frustrating. If you have access to our hands-on labs, there are preparation labs available tailored for each catalog exercise. Assign these to participants a minimum of two weeks before the exercise.
If you need any help or support with planning, ask a question in our Help and Support forum.
Following these steps ensures clear expectations from your participants and a smooth lead-up to your exercise, which plays a big factor in making it a success!
Do you have any hints or tips for other exercise planners and facilitators? What lessons have you learned, or where have you seen success? Let us know in the comments below.
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