Learn SIAM by Doing: AllSports Business Simulation
Learn SIAM by doing: my experience of the AllSports Business Simulation
Claire Agutter, Scopism Founder, shares her experiences of the AllSports Business Simulation.
Earlier this year, I travelled to the Netherlands to take part in the beta testing of the FIDDS AllSports Business Simulation. I’ve spent a lot of my career talking about SIAM: writing about it, teaching it, consulting on it and helping organizations work out how to apply it. I was interested to see what would happen when some of those principles were turned into a serious game, and I came away convinced that business simulations have an important role to play in SIAM adoption.
Book the Service North joint ticket to experience AllSports in the UK this November.
The SIAM people challenge
One of the things we sometimes underestimate about adopting SIAM is the people impact of the change.
- We’re asking internal teams and external service providers to think beyond their own responsibilities.
- We’re asking people to collaborate with organizations that may also be their commercial competitors.
- We’re introducing new roles, changing accountabilities and asking everyone to focus on end-to-end services and shared outcomes.
You can explain all of that in a presentation; you can put it into an operating model; you can document it in processes and contracts. That doesn’t necessarily help to create the behaviours that are necessary for SIAM to be successful.
From silos and stress to a successful service
AllSports puts participants into a fictional sports retail organization supported by internal teams and multiple external suppliers. Everyone has a role and, very quickly, everyone also has problems.
There are incidents and business requests to deal with, competing priorities, contractual considerations and the inevitable challenges of trying to deliver an end-to-end service when different parts of that service are owned by different people. It’s deliberately uncomfortable at times, because it’s recognizable.
I found the first round quite uncomfortable! There is a massive difference between somebody standing at the front of the room explaining why silos don’t work and experiencing the chaos and confusion for yourself. As a certified process nerd, my brain was immediately looking for ways to make things better.
Across the far rounds, the different roles come together as a team to change how everyone operates.
Introducing the structure
In AllSports, SIAM principles are introduced alongside visual management using Kanban and Obeya, making better use of management information and continuous improvement through PDCA. The team can see what happens as visibility improves, responsibilities become clearer and people start managing the overall service rather than just their individual part of it.
After each round, that is a check-in for the performance of AllSports and also its supplier organizations, allowing participants to see whether or not their changes have made a difference to business performance as well as to the comfort levels in the room.
Why do simulations work?
That experience reinforced for me why business simulations can be such a useful learning tool.
Experiential learning is based on a simple idea: people learn through doing and reflecting on what happened, rather than receiving information. Research into business simulations and serious games has found benefits including knowledge acquisition, engagement, teamwork, decision-making and the development of practical skills.
There is also evidence that serious games can be particularly effective for procedural learning: understanding not just what something is, but how to actually do it.
The SIAM angle
The specific benefit from a SIAM perspective is the way that AllSports unites everybody in the room around a shared objective. With standard training courses, people can leave the room with a different understanding of the theory, whereas in a simulation, they experience the same frustrations, decisions, mistakes, and improvements together, cementing real learning.
For organisations that are considering a SIAM transformation, this is a fantastic way to highlight the importance of new behaviours to a team. And importantly, that team might include different organisations, including the service providers that will be involved in the SIAM ecosystem.
A safe place to get it wrong
Simulations also provide opportunities to fail in a safe way. SIAM transformations involve behavioural changes and affect relationships and ways of working. Organizations won’t get everything right first time.
AllSports allows participants the opportunity to experiment. In the room, you can make a decision, see what happens, try something different, and observe if that leads to any improvements. One of the changes that we made when I was playing on Sports actually made performance worse for around, and that accelerated our learning curve.
From beta test to Scopism Approved Product
Following the beta test and our subsequent review, I’m delighted that AllSports has now achieved Scopism Approved Product status. Scopism Approved Products are independently reviewed for their alignment with SIAM best practise, giving organizations additional confidence when choosing products or services to support their SIAM journey.
Learn SIAM by doing at Service North 2026
There’s an opportunity to experience AllSports yourself this November. We’re delighted to welcome FIDDS as a Service North 2026 sponsor. On November 3rd, the day after Service North, they’re running a full AllSports business simulation for a small group of participants.
The November experience is for a group of 8-12 participants. This can include representatives from multiple organizations, or an organization could choose to reserve this for their team as part of learning and development around the SIAM transformation. If you are adopting SIAM, developing your teams’ capabilities, or simply want to understand what effective multi-provider collaboration really feels like, this is a fantastic opportunity.
Learn more and book the joint conference ticket here.