Clinton Keith

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(No Transcript)
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Agile Methodology in Game Development Year 3
Clinton Keith CTO, High Moon Studios
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What Well Talk About

• History of Agile at High Moon
• What is Agile? Why use it?
• Overview of Scrum, one Agile Methodology
• Agile Planning
• Well touch on eXtreme Programming (XP)
• The results of using Agile at High Moon
• QA
• This is about what we experienced, not the Right
  Way to make games

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History of Agile at High Moon

• Used Scrum in last year of Darkwatch
• Helped keep the project on track
• Adopted XP and Agile planning practices on new
  projects over the last year

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Why Adopt Agile?

• The Reasons/Goals
• Reduce wasted effort/crunch
• To find the fun first
• Other industries have used Agile to develop
  better products faster. Can we?

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What is Agile Development?

• The roots of Agile go back 60 years for product
  dev (in Japan) and 30 years for software dev.
• The Agile Manifesto (modified for game dev)
• We value
• People and communication over processes and
  project management tools
• Working game over comprehensive design documents
  
• Publisher collaboration over milestone
  definitions
• Responding to change over following a plan

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Wasted Effort Can Come From Noiseand it
influences what methodology we use
Preproduction
Production
Source Strategic Management and Organizational
Dynamics by Ralph Stacey in Agile Software
Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike
Beedle.
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Finding the Fun First
Not fun yet?
Alpha/Beta
E3 Demo
Production
Preproduction
Design
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What is Scrum? Scrum is..

• One of the major Agile Methologies
• Iterative
• Commitment-oriented
• Results-oriented
• Disciplined
• About making things visible so you can apply
  common sense

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The Scrum Cast
Product Owner
Scrum Master
Anyone. Not a lead role
Director
Artist
Artist
The Team
Animator
Marketing
QA
Programmer
Customers
Designer
Publisher Producer
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Product Backlog
Jump
Product Backlog as prioritized by Product Owner
Crouch
Defined as User Stories with conditions of
satisfaction
Run
Estimated with relative User Story Points
that help track progress
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Sprints (Iteration)
Change
Sprint (Fixed Duration)
Sprint Backlog broken out by team
Sprint Goals
Game
Jump
New Game (Vertical Slice Added)
Crouch
Run
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Review and Planning
Game
Jump
Fly
Crouch
Review and Planning
Run
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Daily Scrum
Daily Scrum
Jump
Game
Fly
Crouch
Run
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The War Room
Completed Tasks
User Stories (Sprint Backlog)
Tasks
Burndown Chart
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Jump User Story
Mon.
Tues.
Wed.
Thurs.
Task
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0
0
Jump Input Control
3
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16
10
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Jump Tuning
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8
16
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Jump Animation

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8
0
Double Jump Option
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Sprint Backlog Burndown Chart
Drag works against velocity
Slope Velocity
Hours
Backlogged Story
Days
Must hit zero hours by end
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Scaling Scrum - The Scrum of Scrums
Functional Leadership
Support services
Teams
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Releases The Product Backlog Iceberg
High
Sprint
Release
Value
Cost
Priority
Future Releases
Risk
Knowledge
Low
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Release Burndown
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eXtreme Programming (XP)
Alpha/Beta
Cost Of Change
Development
Design
Time
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Agile Game Development

• Lessons learned
• Benefits
• Where to go for more info?

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Lessons Learned

• Start small
• One Scrum team doing a prototype would be ideal
• Do what the book says from the start
• Company dysfunctions can creep in otherwise
• Dont get too dogmatic about it
• but Scrum is meant to be modified (eventually)

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Lessons Learned

• Agile planning is harder to start than thought
• But XP was easier
• Coaching was critical
• Onsite and CSM
• Publisher buy-in wasnt difficult
• Getting them into reviews and planning took
  adjustment

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Lessons Learned
Normal Velocity
Overtime Velocity

• Overtime value is limited
• but average intensity is raised

• Old Habits Die Hard
• Over-design
• Delayed integration
• Seating by discipline
• Command and control

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Testing needs to be pushed
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Benefits

• Improved
• Productivity
• Reliability of build
• Quality of game
• Morale
• Ownership
• Team work
• Communication
• Enables low-cost executive awareness
• Which means you dont have to work hard to find
  out whats going on

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Where to go for more info?

• www.agilegamedevelopment.com
• Books
• Mailing lists For Game Developers to share info
  on adopting Agile
• AGD Blog Addressing challenges and news on
  adopting Agile to Game Development

Questions?