Transition to Scrum Midway through a AAA Development Cycle: Lessons Learned

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Transition to Scrum Midway through a AAA
Development Cycle Lessons Learned

• Asbjoern Malte Soendergaard
• Development Manager
• Crytek GmbH

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Taking advantage of agile in a non-agile
environment
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Agenda

• Why agile this late
• Our Process
• Next steps (for us)

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Agile worked for us

• Shiped Crysis 12 months after implementing Scrum
• 80 developers (7-12 Scrum teams)
• 2/3 of the game was redeveloped
• Meta Critic Score of 91

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Why agile this late in the production?

• Feature creep
• Unable to measure progress
• We needed to reduce scope
• Vision blurred by a huge project schedule

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Minimize Waste

• Crysis strategy
• Cross disciplinary teams when possible
• Teams should always sit together
• Always solve tasks sequeltially, not
  simultanously
• Two things can ever be equally important force
  creative priorities
• Progress only counts if it works in the build

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Initial Product Backlog

• Figure out what features need to be done
• A feature means something you need at least two
  different skillsets to complete
• Make one big list in excel and try to group
  these in related areas
• Prioritize list
• Start with the featuregroup which is most
  important

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Setting up the first Scrum Team

• Take the people you need out of the waterfall
  production team
• Seat them together away from the rest of the team
• Focus on getting this ONE team sprinting

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Don't panic !

• You have just started chaos
• People in the matrix structure will be frustrated
• Shelter your sprint team
• 80/20 Support Rule

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Repeat the process

• Figure out what is the second most important
  feature group on your backlog
• Create a team based on who is left in the
  waterfall project plan
• Iterate these simple steps until everybody is
  sprinting
• Make sure leads are not Scrum Masters
• First team is the hardest

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Scrum Structure at Crysis

• Product Owner
• Customer (Lead)
• Scrum Master
• Team Members

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Product Backlog

• Managing expectations NOT schedules
• Creating Product Backlog Items is a process of
  negotiating with the team what you expect
• You define what you want, they go do it
• Tell people what is expected not how to achieve
  it

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Product Backlog - First Iteration
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Product Backlog Grooming Second iteration
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Product Backlog Grooming Second iteration
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Product Backlog Grooming Second iteration
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Product Backlog

• This is what we would like to improve
• Estimation process
• Valuation process
• Need a process to encourage people to prioritize

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Current Product Backlog

• ..\..\Desktop\GDC-Presentation.jpg

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Current Product Backlog
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Current Product Backlog
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Current Product Backlog
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Current Product Backlog
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Current Product Backlog
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Final thougths

• Common sense works, you just need a framework to
  scale it
• The product backlog helps you manage expectations
  and guide the team
• Dont be affraid to go down the agile path, but
  dont think you are agile just because you call
  it a sprint plan
• Always fall back to lean principles and continue
  to identify areas you can reduce waste

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Questions? Asbjoern Malte Soendergaardasbjoern
_at_crytek.de