Agile Game Development with SCRUM

Description

Deliver Better Games Faster, On Budget - And Make Game Development Fun Again!

Game development is in crisis - facing bloated budgets, impossible schedules, unmanageable complexity, and death march overtime. It's no wonder so many development studios are struggling to survive. Fortunately, there is a solution. Scrum and Agile methods are already revolutionizing development outside the game industry. Now, long-time game developer Clinton Keith shows exactly how to successfully apply these methods to the unique challenges of game development.

Keith has spent more than fifteen years developing games, seven of them with Scrum and agile methods. Drawing on this unparalleled expertise, he shows how teams can use Scrum to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; craft games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for development teams at the same time.

You'll learn to form successful agile teams that incorporate programmers, producers, artists, testers, and designers - and promote effective collaboration within and beyond those teams, throughout the entire process. From long-range planning to progress tracking and continuous integration, Keith offers dozens of tips, tricks, and solutions - all based firmly in reality and hard-won experience.

Coverage includes

* Understanding Scrum's goals, roles, and practices in the context of game development
* Communicating and planning your game's vision, features, and progress
* Using iterative techniques to put your game into a playable state every two to four weeks - even daily
* Helping all team participants succeed in their roles
* Restoring stability and predictability to the development process
* Managing ambiguous requirements in a fluid marketplace
* Scaling Scrum to large, geographically distributed development teams
* Getting started: overcoming inertia and integrating Scrum into your studio's current processes
Increasingly, game developers and managers are recognizing that things can't go on the way they have in the past. Game development organizations need a far better way to work. Agile Game Development with Scrum gives them that - and brings the profitability, creativity, and fun back to game development.

CONTENTS:

Foreword xvii

Preface xix

Acknowledgments xxiii

About the Author xxv

Part I: The Problem and the Solution 1

Chapter 1: The Crisis Facing Game Development 3

A Brief History of Game Development 4

The Crisis 10

A Silver Lining 11

Additional Reading 12

Chapter 2: Agile Development 13

Why Projects Are Hard 14

Why Use Agile for Game Development? 20

What an Agile Project Looks Like 28

The Challenge of Agile 32

Additional Reading 32

Part II: Scrum and Agile Planning 33

Chapter 3: Scrum 35

The History of Scrum 36

Scrum Parts 41

Scrum Roles 44

Customers and Stakeholders 54

Chickens and Pigs 55

Scaling Scrum 56

Summary 56

Additional Reading 57

Chapter 4: Sprints 59

The Big Picture 59

Planning 59

Tracking Progress 68

The Daily Scrum Meeting 74

Sprint Reviews 75

Retrospectives 78

Summary 84

Additional Reading 84

Chapter 5: User Stories 85

A Fateful Meeting 85

What Are User Stories? 87

Levels of Detail 88

Conditions of Satisfaction 90

Using Index Cards for User Stories 92

INVEST in User Stories 92

User Roles 97

Defining Done 99

Collecting Stories 100

Advantages of User Stories 103

Summary 105

Additional Reading 105

Chapter 6: Agile Planning 107

Why Agile Planning? 107

The Product Backlog 108

Estimating Story Size 112

Release Planning 117

Summary 124

Additional Reading 124

Part III: Agile Game Development 125

Chapter 7: Video Game Project Planning 127

Midnight Club Story 127

Minimum Required Feature Sets 128

The Need for Stages 130

The Development Stages 130

Mixing the Stages 132

Managing Stages with Releases 132

Production on an Agile Project 134

Summary 155

Additional Reading 155

Chapter 8: Teams 157

Great Teams 158

A Scrum Approach to Teams 159

Game Teams and Collaboration 168

Scaling and Distributing Scrum 173

Summary 188

Additional Reading 188

Chapter 9: Faster Iterations 189

Where Does Iteration Overhead Come From? 190

Measuring and Displaying Iteration Time 191

Personal and Build Iteration 193

Summary 201

Additional Reading 201

Part IV: Agile Disciplines 203

Chapter 10: Agile Technology 205

The Problems 205

An Agile Approach 210

Summary 220

Additional Reading 221

Chapter 11: Agile Art and Audio 223

The Problems We Are Solving with Agile 223

Concerns About Agile 225

Art Leadership 226

Art on a Cross-Discipline Team 227

Summary 232

Additional Reading 233

Chapter 12: Agile Design 235

The Problems 236

Designing with Scrum 237

Summary 247

Additional Reading 247

Chapter 13: Agile QA and Production 249

Agile QA 249

The Role of QA on an Agile Game Team 252

Agile Production 259

Summary 262

Additional Reading 263

Part V: Getting Started . 265

Chapter 14: The Myths and Challenges of Scrum 267

Silver Bullet Myths . 267

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt 269

Scrum Challenges 273

Summary 281

Additional Reading 282

Chapter 15: Working with a Publisher 283

The Challenges 284

Building Trust, Allaying Fear 288

Agile Contracts 293

Summary 300

Additional Reading 300

Chapter 16: Launching Scrum 301

The Three Stages of Adoption 301

Adoption Strategies 317

Summary 324

Additional Reading 324

Conclusion 325

Bibliography 327

Index 329