Training New Incident Commanders: Pokemon Style!
summary
Company builds a nontechnical, Pokemon-flavored incident command exercise: a 45-minute lecture plus a 45-minute practice using a made-up Charizard scenario where teams must craft a fire Pokeball, assign IC roles, and run three 10–15 minute checkpoints with a facilitator. Trainees report ~90% increased confidence; about 5% of engineers have taken it so far. Measured effects include more active communication, clearer delegation, and better stakeholder updates; limits are facilitator capacity, single-instance reuse (no repeats), and modest overall uptake.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:01Training challenges
- 3:50Non-technical incident training
- 5:58Pokémon scenario setup
- 7:43Responder roles and handouts
- 9:07Facilitator guidance
- 10:30Manager intervention and team dynamics
- 12:58Final reflection
- 13:39Training impact
- 15:48Scaling and improvements
- 16:29Key takeaways
related talks
14mThe Legend of the Arsonist Firefighter
39mFight, Flight, or Freeze — Releasing Organizational Trauma
40mIncident Response in Unfamiliar Sociotechnical Systems
30mWhat I learned from a clown about engineering culture
34mFearless SREs
27mMind Over Malware: Reducing Decision Fatigue in Incident Response Teams
06mIGNITE: What RomComs didn’t teach me about Incident Management
46mDungeons & Dragons & Development: How Playing Games Makes...