Title: Clinton Keith
1(No Transcript)
2Agile Methodology in Game Development Year 3
Clinton Keith CTO, High Moon Studios
3What 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
4History 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
5Why 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?
6What 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
7Wasted 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.
8Finding the Fun First
Not fun yet?
Alpha/Beta
E3 Demo
Production
Preproduction
Design
9What 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
10The Scrum Cast
Product Owner
Scrum Master
Anyone. Not a lead role
Director
Artist
Artist
The Team
Animator
Marketing
QA
Programmer
Customers
Designer
Publisher Producer
11Product 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
12Sprints (Iteration)
Change
Sprint (Fixed Duration)
Sprint Backlog broken out by team
Sprint Goals
Game
Jump
New Game (Vertical Slice Added)
Crouch
Run
13Review and Planning
Game
Jump
Fly
Crouch
Review and Planning
Run
14Daily Scrum
Daily Scrum
Jump
Game
Fly
Crouch
Run
15The War Room
Completed Tasks
User Stories (Sprint Backlog)
Tasks
Burndown Chart
16Jump User Story
Mon.
Tues.
Wed.
Thurs.
Task
8
0
0
Jump Input Control
3
16
16
10
4
Jump Tuning
16
8
16
4
Jump Animation
8
8
0
Double Jump Option
17Sprint Backlog Burndown Chart
Drag works against velocity
Slope Velocity
Hours
Backlogged Story
Days
Must hit zero hours by end
18Scaling Scrum - The Scrum of Scrums
Functional Leadership
Support services
Teams
19Releases The Product Backlog Iceberg
High
Sprint
Release
Value
Cost
Priority
Future Releases
Risk
Knowledge
Low
20Release Burndown
21eXtreme Programming (XP)
Alpha/Beta
Cost Of Change
Development
Design
Time
22Agile Game Development
- Lessons learned
- Benefits
- Where to go for more info?
23Lessons 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)
24Lessons 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
25Lessons 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
26Benefits
- 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
27Where 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?