Bender – An Educational Game for Teaching Agile Hardware Development

Within this paper, an educational game is presented that transfers Agile principles for the development of physical systems. The training leverages elements of Learning Factories (LF) to simulate an Agile hardware development project within two days. By doing so, the challenges of applying Agile within the hardware domain are realistically reflected. The training revolves around a physical wire bending machine, which a development team of four participants needs to modify within a realistic engineering and production setting. A trial with mechanical engineering students was conducted to validate the training design. The participants showed a positive attitude towards the active learning approach. Furthermore, the students expressed that they perceived the game to improve their learning regarding Agile hardware development.