Agile Methods in Software Development a real world story

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Agile Methods in Software Development (a real
world story)
Clinton Keith CTO, High Moon Studios
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The goal of this presentation

• Learn about Agile Software Development through
  the story of applying it to the game development
  environment.

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Overview

• My Dark Waterfall Past
• History of Video Game Dev
• The Current State of the Business
• What is Agile and how it is applied
• QA at the end

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My Dark Waterfall Past

• What is waterfall?
• 7 years in the defense industry
• Nuclear weapon delivery systems
• F-22 (almost a 20 year project)
• The memo
• Distributed classified work
• Underwater systems
• Lots of time with 2179
• Never heard of Agile
• Seen Waterfall grow in VG
• Theres a real lack of Agile awareness still
• Seen the same types of failures

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Spectacular Software Failures
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History of Video Game Dev

• Industry is 30 years old
• In the good old days
• One person could make a game in 3 months.
• It was a programmer
• Who also did the design and art

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and it showed
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Evolution of Dev Process

• I think of the evolution of our process occurring
  in three stages
• Hacking
• Large scale hacking
• Waterfall

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Stage 1 - Hacking

• Small teams of 1-5 people
• Communication was not an issue
• Development was Agile-like

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Proposal
Prototype Iteration
Test Unit
Sound fun?
Fun?
?
Success!
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Stage 2 Large scale hacking

• Team sizes 10-20 People
• Communication breakdown and divergent hacking
  cause spectacular failures
• Hard to kill after the first million
• Many developers are still doing this

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Stage 3 Waterfall to the rescue!

• Large design docs
• Excel MS Project
• Hierarchies Producers
• Phased development
• The result

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Development effort curve
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Costs is growing much faster than the market
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VG Industry is at a cross-roads

• Costs are increasing, value is dropping
• We can have another disaster soon
• Can Agile methods help?

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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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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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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 (slightly changed)
• We value
• People and communication over processes and
  project management tools
• Working software over comprehensive design
  documents
• Customer collaboration over contracts
• Responding to change over following a plan

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Wasted Effort Can Come From Noiseand it
influences what methodology we use
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
Alpha/Beta
Demo
Design
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What is Scrum? Scrum is..

• One of the major Agile Methodologies
• 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
Director
Artist
Scrum Master
Artist
Animator
Marketing
Anyone. Not a lead role
QA
The Team
Programmer
Publisher Producer
Designer
Programmer
Customers
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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
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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
• Customer 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
• 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?