Tech Tempest®

An educational simulation by SHIFT127

© SHIFT127 Pty Ltd · Tech Tempest® AU Reg. 2579659
Tech Tempest®
Council · Blueprint · Forge · League
🏛️ Team
Welcome to

Tech Tempest®

Eight ancient civilisations. One modern contract. Hudson Hanseatic Bank is building a digital bank from scratch — and your team is pitching to win it.

⚖️
Council
Assemble your council. Explore the biggest questions.
📐
Blueprint
Choose features. Design what nobody else would build.
⚒️
Forge
Location, releases, pricing. Build the winning bid.
🛡️
League
Face the Risk Committee. Justify your choices. Submit.

At the end, the Tempest arrives.
Only one team walks away with the contract.

Enter code to begin

The Eight Civilisations

Eight teams. Eight identities. One contract.

🏛️
Athenian
Assembly
Athens · 5th c. BCE
⚔️
Roman
Collegium
Rome · 1st c. CE
🕌
Byzantine
Architects
Constantinople · 6th c.
🎨
Medici
Network
Florence · 15th c.
🐪
Silk Road
Consortium
Central Asia · 13th c.
🔭
Alexandrian
Order
Alexandria · 3rd c. BCE
📜
Sumerian
Syndicate
Mesopotamia · 26th c. BCE
🐉
Ming Dynasty
Builders
China · 15th c.
Each civilisation carries a unique capability and a sworn rival. One of these is yours.
🏛️

Your X-Factor
RIVAL
⚡ Your Call

Elect Your Council

The Merchant is always present. Choose three more.

1 of 4

Who sits on the council?

A council of four. The Merchant is mandatory — they speak for you when the bank visits. Choose three others to complete the council.

·
Council members
1 of 4 chosen
Spokesperson
💼 Merchant
How risk gets mitigated. When the Tempest hits, mitigating risk needs both the matching capability card AND a council member with the matching role. Choose your three with the storms in mind.
Civilisation
Sworn rival
X-Factor
The Council
⚖️✨

Your council has assembled

Recorded on the Scoreboard

Council submitted. Stand by for the bank's first brief.

When the bank is ready

The Biggest Issues Facing the World Right Now

$23T
Seven companies now worth more than every country on Earth except two
122 days
Empty factory to the world's largest supercomputer — 555,000 GPUs
200M
Protein structures predicted by AI — work that would take humans millions of years
$294K
Total cost to train DeepSeek R1 — matching models that cost hundreds of millions
97%
Accuracy of AI reading medical scans — outperforming most radiologists
$4.4T
Value AI could add to the global economy each year — more than the entire GDP of Germany
15 min
Time to build a working app with AI tools — no programming experience needed
1B+
People who used an AI tool for the first time in the last twelve months
Your Method
The Very Curious Human
Your brief is a moment in the world — not a question.
Find the question hiding underneath.
    Use your AI tools to reach an insight worth sharing.
    When the bank says go
    🏛️
    Athenian Assembly
    Opening Round
    PEOPLE
    Your brief is waiting
    Tap to reveal
    Reveal the brief →
    Your aligned capability
    Your Mission
    Read your brief. Use AI to research the question no one has thought of yet. Build an insight the bank hasn't heard before.
    The bank is listening. 60 seconds to present.
    🏛️
    Athenian Assembly
    Rivalry Round
    RIVAL Roman Collegium
    Head to head
    Tap to reveal
    Reveal the brief →
    Your aligned capability
    Head to Head
    A new brief, rival teams. Use AI to find the sharper angle. Build the stronger case. Only one team wins the bank's endorsement.
    Both teams present. The bank judges.
    🏛️
    Athenian Assembly
    Shoulders of Giants
    PEOPLE
    A moment that changed everything
    Tap to reveal
    Reveal your moment →
    Your patron's moment
    Your Tribute
    Use AI to decode the clue. Find who they were, what they did, and one thing that will surprise the room.
    Without [your patron], [your capability] would not exist.
    Complete the sentence. 60 seconds to present.
    ⚖️📜✨

    The Council is complete

    You found your seat at the table.
    • ⚖️
      Form your council
      You chose your civilisation, your X-Factor, and your four roles.
    • 💡
      Find the real questions
      Two briefs decoded. The opening and the rivalry. You named the questions hidden inside.
    • 📜
      Honour your patron
      Your tribute is prepared. Sixty seconds. Clearly. Briefly. With conviction.

    The Blueprint begins next — choosing what to build and why. The bank will call you when it's ready.

    ⚖️📜✨

    The Council is complete

    You found your seat at the table.
    • ⚖️
      Council assembled
      Civilisation chosen. Four roles selected. X-Factor claimed.
    • 💡
      Questions decoded
      Two briefs. The opening and the rivalry.
    • 📜
      Patron honoured
      Your tribute is prepared.
    Watch the front of the room. The bank is about to brief you on what comes next.
    Enter code to begin The Blueprint

    From Design to Delivery

    Your blueprint is locked. Now build the bid.

    📍
    Location
    Where you build
    🏗️
    Infrastructure
    What you run on
    📦
    Releases
    What ships when
    💰
    Pricing
    Your terms
    🤖
    AI Agents
    Automation risk
    Five decisions that determine your cost, your risk, and your price to the bank.
    Enter code to begin The Forge

    Your features are chosen. Now deliver them.

    "Show us how you'd deliver our vision — and what trade-offs you'd recommend." — Hudson Hanseatic Bank

    📊 Project Scale

    200K new customers/year1M active users by Year 5.

    ⚡ Your Effort Budget

    Foundation12 features • 70 pts70 High-Value4 features40 X-Factor1 × 25 pts25
    Total: 120 pts

    The Baseline

    Every bid starts from a baseline — the safest, most expensive configuration. NYC delivery, Cloud-Native infrastructure, no discount. This is what it costs if you change nothing.

    Velocity measures how many effort points your team can deliver in one release. If total effort exceeds velocity, features must wait for R2 or R3. Your location and infrastructure choices change your velocity.

    Your Starting Position
    New York · Cloud-Native · No discount
    Total Effort
    points to deliver
    105
    Velocity
    per release cycle
    5-Year TCO
    list price

    The Four Levers

    "We're looking for the best combination of innovation, risk management, and value. Don't assume the lowest bid wins."

    — Nadira, CEO, Hudson Hanseatic Bank

    The bank has never contracted a full NYC-rate engagement at this scale. The baseline is too expensive — but you have four levers to find the right balance.

    📍
    Location
    Where your team is based. Shapes cost, speed, coordination.
    ☁️
    Infrastructure
    Cloud, Hybrid, or On-Premise. How far from the bank's systems.
    📅
    Scheduling
    Phase across three releases. Later delivery = less maintenance.
    💰
    Discount
    Reduce margin to sharpen the bid. Cuts into profit.
    ⚡ Your Call

    Choose Your Delivery Location

    Tap a city. Cost, velocity, and risk — every choice has a trade-off.

    City Cost Velocity Timezone Risk

    Understanding Infrastructure

    Where your code runs shapes cost, speed, and risk for the next five years.

    ☁️
    Cloud-Native
    Everything runs on rented servers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) that scale automatically. 89% of new digital banks launch this way. Fast to deploy, but the bank's operations team has no experience running a fully cloud platform.
    ⚖️
    Hybrid
    Sensitive data stays on the bank's own servers. Apps, analytics, and AI run in the cloud. The industry standard — 82% of established banks use this model. Extends what the client already does well.
    🏢
    On-Premise
    Everything built inside the bank's own data centres. The model their team knows deeply. Highest setup cost but lowest running cost at scale, and the lowest risk posture for this client.
    💡 The Repatriation Question
    37% of enterprises have moved workloads back from the cloud to on-premise in the past two years — a trend called cloud repatriation. The reasons: unpredictable costs at scale, data sovereignty requirements, and performance needs that cloud can't match. Your infrastructure choice isn't just about today. It's a five-year bet on where the industry is heading.
    ⚡ Your Call

    Choose Your Infrastructure

    The Release Model

    Software ships in releases. Your velocity determines how much fits in each one.

    R1
    Month 6
    Launch product. First impression. Foundation always ships here.
    R2
    Month 12
    Second wave. Expand coverage. Strategic deferrals land here.
    R3
    Month 18+
    Complete the vision. Everything else.

    💡 What to know

    Foundation uses 70 pts of your R1 velocity — the rest is for differentiators.
    🤖 AI-buildable features cost only 5 pts — they give you scheduling flexibility.
    X-Factor in R1 makes a stronger launch but costs 25 pts. Deferring to R2 reduces R1 risk.
    📊 Velocity Loading
    <50%
    Under
    50–60%
    Light
    60–70%
    Consrv
    70–80%
    Balanced
    80–90%
    Ambitns
    90–95%
    Stretchd
    >95%
    Extreme
    ⚡ Your Call

    Schedule Your Releases

    📊 Effort Allocation
    R1: 0 / 0R2: 0 / 0R3: 0 /
    R1 · Month 6
    R2 · Month 12
    R3 · Month 18+
    Assign features to see R1 loading.
    FeatureR1R2R3
    ⚡ Your Call

    Commercial Terms

    Your final price is expressed as a 5-Year TCOTotal Cost of Ownership — everything the client pays over five years, including building the platform, maintaining it, and running the servers.. Hudson Hanseatic has not disclosed their budget — you're competing against the other teams.

    Select Your Discount

    0%5%10%15%20%25%
    0%
    Discount from list price
    Your Bid Price · 5-Year TCO
    $0M
    Discount: 0% (-$0M)
    📊 See full pricing breakdown
    US-Based Fixed Costs not location-adjusted
    Platform, Regulatory & SecurityBanking platform licences, US regulatory compliance (OCC/Fed), security certifications (SOC 2, PCI-DSS), legal and contractual costs. Deployed and governed in the US — not location-adjusted.$10.0M
    US Client Management TeamThe senior team embedded with Hudson Hanseatic in New York: Client Director, Programme Director, Solutions Architect, Regulatory Lead. These roles require US presence and regulatory knowledge — they do not move offshore. Fixed for the life of the engagement.$5.0M
    US-fixed subtotal$15.0M
    Feature Development NYC ×1.00
    Feature BuildThe build cost of the features you selected — delivered by your chosen city's engineering team, so scales with their labour rate. . (raw: $0M)$0M
    Feature MaintenanceAnnual cost to keep each feature running, updated, and secure — typically 15–20% of build cost per year. Performed by your delivery team in the chosen city. Earlier releases carry more maintenance cost because they run for longer within the 5-year contract. (5-year)$0M
    Development subtotal$0M
    Program Management NYC-based · not location-adjusted
    Delivery ServicesProject management, business analysis, change management, DevOps coordination and QA oversight — managed from New York regardless of where the engineering team is based. Industry benchmark is 40–50% of feature development cost. (45%)$0M
    ContingencyA budget reserve for scope creep, technical complexity and integration surprises. Applied at 15% of feature development cost. This risk is managed from New York — it doesn't get cheaper because your developers are offshore. (15%)$0M
    Program subtotal$0M
    Infrastructure (US-Based) not location-adjusted
    Infrastructure SetupOne-time cost to provision and configure your chosen infrastructure model in the US.$0M
    Platform OperationsOngoing cost to run the platform as your customer base grows to 1 million users. (5-year)$0M
    User growth: 200K→1M over 5 years · $0/user/year
    Infrastructure subtotal$0M
    Subtotal (before discount)$0M
    📊 Review

    Your bid to Hudson Hanseatic Bank

    5-Year Total Cost of Ownership
    $0M Your bid price
    📍
    Location
    🏗️
    Infrastructure
    R1 Loading
    💸
    Discount
    %
    · Team
    · R1
    X-Factor:

    🎯 Strategic Coherence

    ⚒️🛡️

    The bid is built. Now defend it.

    The Risk Committee will price every bold choice you made.
    🏛️
    Council
    Identity & rival
    🎯
    Strategy
    Archetype & X-Factor
    📦
    Features
    Rated & selected
    📍
    Location
    Delivery centre
    🏗️
    Infrastructure
    Platform choice
    📅
    Releases
    Scheduled & priced
    The Risk Committee examines five factors: location, infrastructure, R1 loading, discount, and automation. Each one has a price.
    Enter code to begin The League

    The Risk Landscape

    Your TCO includes 15% contingency. The Risk Committee now prices strategic risk — five decisions you made.

    📍
    Location Risk PRICED
    Coordination friction, timezone gap, cultural distance, talent access — how far is the team from the client?
    🏗️
    Infrastructure Risk PRICED
    How far you depart from the bank's existing systems. Transformation carries delivery risk that the status quo does not.
    Delivery Risk PRICED
    R1 loading determines delivery probability. Higher ambition means higher chance something slips or gets cut.
    💸
    Commercial Risk PRICED
    Discount level compresses margin and reduces buffer for surprises. Aggressive pricing leaves no room for error.
    🤖
    Automation Risk PRICED
    AI-agent features are fast and cheap — but model drift, algorithmic bias, and evolving regulation create governance exposure that scales with dependency.
    📋
    Regulatory Risk ACKNOWLEDGED
    Compliance exposure across jurisdictions — OCC, Fed, GDPR, PCI-DSS. Different locations carry different regulatory overhead.
    🎓
    Talent Risk ACKNOWLEDGED
    Ability to attract, retain, and ramp the right people. AI specialists, senior architects, and domain experts are scarce everywhere.
    🛡️
    Reputational Risk ACKNOWLEDGED
    Failure on a high-profile engagement damages the firm's ability to win future work. The bigger the bid, the bigger the exposure.
    📊 Review

    Where you stand on the five priced factors

    📊 Review

    Risk has a price. The committee has set it.

    📊 Review

    Your final bid to Hudson Hanseatic Bank

    🤝✨

    Your final bid is in

    Recorded with the facilitator

    The facilitator will work through partnerships next. Stay with your team — there will be a moment to choose alliances.

    Your journey is complete

    ⚖️
    Council ✓
    📐
    Blueprint ✓
    ⚒️
    Forge ✓
    🛡️
    League ✓
    Location
    Infrastructure
    Final Bid to Hudson Hanseatic
    What happens next
    🤝
    Partnerships. Two rival teams may choose to merge — combining strengths, sharing risk, splitting cards. The bank facilitates.
    🌀
    The Tempest. One spin of the wheel. Low numbers capture value. High numbers face risk. Only the right cards and roles can protect you.
    🏦
    The Decision. Hudson Hanseatic Bank reviews the final bids and announces the winner.
    ⚡ Laptops down. Eyes to the front. The Tempest is coming.