The document provides guidance on writing effective crisis management training scenarios. It recommends starting with defining the training objectives and key player decisions/actions needed to meet those objectives. It also suggests identifying different player roles, creating a hierarchy of scenario events/incidents/injects, and developing stakeholder personas. The document outlines 6 steps for structuring an effective scenario, including defining objectives, roles, events, incidents, injects, stakeholder personas, and content/timing of injects. It includes an example pandemic scenario outline following the recommended structure.

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Writing Effective Scenarios - Quick
Start Guide 3.0

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1 Scope
The purpose of this document is to give advice about how to write effective scenarios.
Although we give special consideration to our technology, Conducttr, the process is applicable
whatever your method of deliverable.
1.1 BACKGROUND
Many people tell us that they find the prospect or activity of writing scenarios daunting. This need
not be so. The approach taken by this document does not rely on creativity or inspiration but instead
on good research and procedure.
The biggest problem that usually holds people back from writing a crisis scenario for a training
exercise is not knowing where to start. So let’s start there!
2 How to get started
At the end of this article I’ll present a structure that’s a good way
to present your scenario to others. However, when you’re looking
at a blank page, trying to design your scenario around a rigid a-to-
b-to-c process doesn’t quite work - as you’ll know if you’ve ever
tried it. Even if you don’t consider yourself a creative person in the
sense of being a great writer, you need a design approach that
allows you to be creative in the sense of seeing all the
opportunities to join all the dots. So, let’s start by defining those
dots that must be joined!
Great scenarios do the following:
Meet a training goal
• there must be something you want to say with this
exercise - a core belief or takeaway. This is what writers
would call the premise. In a training exercise it’s the
primary thing you want learners to understand or
appreciate which is the umbrella for any technical or
procedural details you have underneath.
• there could be specific information or procedures you
want trainees to use or remember which must be
accomplished to a certain level of competency
Are engaging
• the scenario must be relevant to the trainees (timely,
useful) and resonate (familiar and meaningful)
• allow trainees to use the knowledge and skills they
already have
Emotion is important
People learn best when information
is combined with emotion because
it’s how the brain works, and this
creates a memorable experience.
This is why Powerpoint presentations
are the least effective way to deliver
training. Yes, information is distilled
to the essentials and can be quickly
delivered by a speaker but the
receiver – the trainee – is less likely
to be engaging their brain. Further,
the trainee is not putting into
practice what they know and learn
because they are not actively
engaged in a realistic situation.
Only interactive, emotional exercises
that create memorable experiences
are an effective means of delivering
crisis scenarios because:
• they use stories to convey
meaning
• they use emotion to commit the
meaning to memory
• they use decision-making under
stress to ensure the trainee is
practicing as they’re learning.

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• demonstrate that decisions are meaningful (which means showing the consequences of their
actions or inaction)
• create emotion – which is the key to memorability. In crisis simulations you can provoke
emotion with surprise and challenge. For example, working against a ticking clock is a sure-
fire way to create stress which generates very powerful emotions.
Take the minimum amount of time and cost to create
• work with existing or freely available assets
• reuse or adapt past scenarios
• only last as long and go as deep as is necessary to accomplish the other objectives.
Trying to accomplish all the above in one pass with a linear process is tough to say the least and
that’s why we invented the crisis scenario canvas.
2.1 CRISIS SCENARIO CANVAS
The crisis scenario canvas offers a bird’s eye view of your training exercise and allows you to iterate
through ideas without feeling the pressure to start at any particular point. Of course, knowing the
training objective and what you want to achieve is usually the starting point, but you may find
yourself in possession of a great video clip and think “what can I do with this?”
Figure 1 The crisis scenario canvas

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2.2 DECISION-DRIVEN, ACTION-ORIENTED
Try to think of your scenario as being “decision-driven, action-oriented”.
That is, you want to identify meaningful choices that will indicate the
trainees’ knowledge or intuition, and will experientially reveal your
premise. The major decisions and the corresponding actions the training
audience must take are the tent poles that hold up the scenario.
It’s quite common for designs to take shape around the major events
(also known as “serials”), and this is how your scenario will be presented,
but be sure to base them on a player decision/action as shown in
Figure 2.
Figure 2 Structure of an event
If you’re unfamiliar with the subject matter, this is where your questions
to a subject matter expert should be focused: what are the key points
someone should know if working in this role and what decisions or
actions can I get them to take that will demonstrate that knowledge and
ability?
Figure 3 shows a variation on the popular OODA loop: Conducttr
publishes content to create the world or simulate an event and then the
training audience must decide what to do, and then do it.
Ask yourself what information is needed to understand the situation, to
make an informed decision and what information will be revealed
because of that decision and action? When should that information be
revealed and how much time should be allowed to make the decision and act?
Don’t forget the minimum time and effort rule - what information sources are already available to me
and what could I create cheaply? Use Conducttr’s content library at https://ventura.conducttr.com/
Time, Data and Stress
Effective critical decision making
requires good situational
assessment of risk and an
understanding of consequences
of actions and inaction. Stress is
generated from the limited time
in which to decide and an
uncertain or potentially
ambiguous understanding of the
crisis (i.e. lack of perfect
situational awareness).
Uncertainty comes from lack of
information or untrustworthy or
unverified information. Too
much information also creates
stress.
When designing your decision
points, you now have some
guidelines about the type and
frequency of content that needs
to be published:
• participants must
make decisions that
will have
consequences
• the information
available to trainees
on which to base their
decision is imperfect
• there should be
limited time in which
to assimilate the
published content.

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Figure 3 The decision cycle
2.3 EVENTS AND INCIDENTS
If you’re dealing with a familiar type of scenario, you’ll already have a broad story arc for how things
will play out. Hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics, shootings… they all have a familiar beginning,
middle and end. But to deliver your training goals you might want to focus on a specific aspect or
period or perspective.
As the primary decisions start to take shape, you’ll begin to formulate an overarching narrative for
the scenario and you’ll know what a good inciting event could be to kick off everything.
Consider working backwards from the decisions and live role play sessions to determine what events
and incidents you need. If you’ve used the canvas, you can now start to create a timeline and
structure.
2.4 STAKEHOLDERS
Set aside the world of crisis simulations for a moment and consider what makes for a gripping story.
Great movies and novels are a web of secrets and conflict; they are about who has information and
who doesn’t and who’s telling the truth to who and who’s lying. These are your stakeholders!
Every crisis has a set of stakeholders that represent a range of interests and points of view around
the crisis. The number and type of stakeholders is largely determined by the information you need
to deliver and the way you need to deliver it. But you’re also likely to need characters to play the
role of antagonist and mentor.
The antagonist(s) is the character that works against the player. This could be a journalist, a hacker,
a celebrity, a politician - anyone who makes the player’s life more complicated. If the trainee is
trying to calm the situation then these characters are trying to stir it up.
The mentor is a character that helps the player - usually with timely advice or information. It’s best if
this character is “in world” meaning that it’s a stakeholder from the world of the scenario rather
than an instructor or the facilitator which would be consider “out of world”.

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3 Bringing it all together
Now that you have your scenario sketched and have detailed the decisions, you can begin to
structure everything into a design document.
ISO 22398 identifies the following hierarchy for crisis exercises and these make for good document
headings:
• Objectives
o Scenario background
 Main events
• Incidents (consequences)
o Injects
Because a scenario is a story, the main events or serials are the acts or chapters of the story that
provide an arc from inciting event to the resolution. Each event has a series of consequences to
which the trainees must react – they’re the decisions you’ve identified.
For example, an inciting event might be the announcement of a hurricane warning which has the
consequences of food stockpiling, petrol shortages, congested roads, influx of storm chasers and so
on.
Now turning to injects, it’s helpful to look to the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization
(SISO) document a Guideline on Scenario Development for Simulation Environments. Here the
document identifies four types of inject (which they refer to as events):
• Communication events – information given to trainees (e.g. news report, instructions,
tweets)
• Interaction events – in a simulation environment this could be any type of interaction
between scenario entities but in the case of crisis management or business continuity
training this might be better viewed as a direct provocation to trainees such as a decision
point or live role play.
• State change events – a scenario entity changes state (e.g. a road is re-opened, power is
restored, a crowd riots)
• Environmental events – this is a type of state change related to the environment (e.g. it
starts to rain, heat increases, disturbance gets louder)
What’s good about this breakdown is that it helps stimulate ideas that might make the scenario feel
more realistic and engaging.
If you’re still using PowerPoint and pieces of paper to deliver injects, it’s really time to upgrade your
method and look at using some digital tools like Conducttr. I’ll resist the urge to go into a sales pitch
but you should ask yourself if you’re really delivering engaging and effective crisis training by talking
at people rather than having them react to a simulated crisis.
If you are using Conducttr then you can start to structure your training exercise by:
1. Create a new serial for each event
2. Create the injects
See Figure 4 for an example.

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Figure 4 Structuring your scenario in Conducttr

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4 Quick Start
The table below gives a summary of the steps to follow for documenting your scenario.
Step Explanation
1. Decide on your training objectives and
then identify the key player decisions
and actions that will achieve those
objectives.
The training objective is what you want to achieve with
the scenario.
Decisions drive an interactive experience and they reveal
the consequences of player action (or inaction)
Assessing if players have the required knowledge for their
role should also be determined through choices rather
than questionnaires.
Leadership development exercises demand the
assessment of qualitative skills like verbal
communications. These can be assessed by human
observers but there should be decisions that drive the
need to communicate (maybe under stress) so that these
skills can surface.
2. Define the player roles Giving players different team roles creates opportunities
for “information asymmetry” (players receive different
information) which creates discussion – and conflict. It
also allows testing for many types of cognitive bias that
arise in teams.
Keep roles to a minimum because each additional role
adds complexity. A role should be determined by who has
privileged access to information or has responsibility for a
specialist task.
3. Create a hierarchy of events, incidents,
injects and decisions
Events are the major tentpoles of the scenario that
provide the structure from start to finish.
Incidents are the consequences of the events. For
example, Event = HURRICANE WARNING; Incidents =
traffic jams on major roads as people leave town;
stockpiling of food etc.
Injects are the content you will publish. This content
informs the players how the world is changing.
Decisions are those you identified in Step 1 and others
which contribute to the tension and immersion but might
not be crucial for assessment.

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4. Identify the stakeholders and create
personas
Every crisis has stakeholders – internal to the organization
and external. Stakeholders have a point of view and their
own agendas. A stakeholder could be generic like
“Minister for the Environment” or “The Unions” but you
must then turn these stakeholders into specific personas
like “John Steel, Secretary General of the ITM”.
Personas have names, personalities and importantly new
and old grudges to bare.
An effective crisis simulation is one in which players need
to decide whose side to take, making friends and enemies
with their choices. This creates emotion and emotion will
make the exercise memorable.
Two key roles you’ll likely need in a simulated exercise is
someone for players to report their decisions to (boss) and
someone to guide them (mentor).
5. Create the content for the injects Content will be published by a persona on a channel to a
role or group.
The choice of channel should be determined by either
what will be used in real life, what makes the exercise
engaging or what response is required from the player.
TV video news for example could go to a TV channel, or on
YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook… etc.
Requests for qualitative answers are best handled by
email.
Phone calls are great for immediacy and emotional
impact.
6. Check and revise the timing of the
injects
Players should have just enough time or slightly too little
to assess (and discuss/share) all the information you
provide. Keep content flowing like a ticking heartbeat so
that the scenario feels alive and players always feel on the
cusp of being overwhelmed.
Any calm should be followed by a storm.
This approach will maintain engagement and is most likely
to reveal how the real person will react under pressure.

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4.1 EXAMPLE – PANDEMIC IN THE CITY (WORK IN PROGRESS)
1. Training objective
Illustrate how a professional services firm might be impacted by a pandemic
2. Define the player roles
Role1: Executive responsible for business continuity
Role2: Marketing Communications/PR exec
3. Events, incidents, injects and decisions
A. EVENT: Increase from World Health Organisation (WHO) Phase 3 – animal to human
transfer but limited - to WHO Phase 4 – community-level outbreaks (London)
a. INCIDENT: Stockpiling food
i. Data: BBC reports of stockpiling & panic buying
ii. Decision: Install hand sanitiser (risk that it runs out when the pandemic
really starts) – somebody didn’t seal the boxes correctly and it’s all gone
hard. Only 3 weeks’ worth of supply. BBC says it could be several months
before we know if it’s going to get worse or better
iii. Decision: change air con schedule (risk becomes unpleasant at work
leading to more stay at home)
b. INCIDENT: Slight uptick in absenteeism among scared workers
i. Data: Increase in excuses
ii. Data: Tube, train and bus reduced service due to sickness
iii. Data: Schools finding hard to keep classes running
iv. Decision: implement teleworking (risk report typists & Partners in
country/rural areas don’t have good internet access)
v. Decision: restrict overseas travel (risk don’t get their BA Gold card) on
advice of the Government to prevent the spread and also spread of
disease to other offices
vi. Decision: Discipline the reckless employee (is making money, one of few
who are working)
B. EVENT: HQ forced to close because of rioting
C. EVENT: WHO Phase 5 – pandemic imminent

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4. Identify the stakeholders and create personas
Internal
- Managing Partner to report to
- Mentor
- Caring/timid PA wants to stay at home
- Ambitious Director wants to advance career (ignores advice)
- Junior professional staff
- Admin staff
Government
- London Mayor
- Public Health Executive
Travel companies
- BA
- London Transport (management and unions)
News organizations
- BBC

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5 Creating your scenario in Conducttr
STEP 1 Add the stakeholders.
These are personas who will send
content to your players.
STEP 2
STEP 3
Add a Serial for each event.
Use the text fields to explain what’s going
to happen.
STEP 4
Click to create a new inject.
The inject will be added to the current
serial.
STEP 5
Create the content.
The example below shows a news video
that will pop-up at 10am
Publish to your Space.
Upload your exercise and it’s ready
to run!