Features and Benefits
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How Scrum and Agile methods can help game developers deliver better games faster, on budget - and start making money and having fun again!
# Why game development is in crisis - and how Agile methods can bring stability and predictability back to the process
# How to successfully adapt Scrum-based Agile best practices to the game industry's unique challenges
# Authored by seasoned industry veteran Clinton Keith, the foremost expert on Agile game development; edited by Mike Cohn, world-renowned Agile guru
Table of Contents
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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
About the Authors
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Clinton Keith is an independent agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer who helps game developers and nongame developers alike adopt Scrum, Extreme Programming, kanban, and other agile practices to greatly improve their productivity, workplace, and product quality.
Over the course of 25 years, Clint has gone from programming avionics for advanced fighter jets and underwater robots to overseeing programming for
hit video games such as Midtown Madness and Midnight Club. Clint has been a programmer, project director, CTO, and director of product development at
several studios. Through a series of presentations and his popular blog, Clint introduced the video game industry to Scrum in 2005. As CTO, Clint helped High Moon Studios achieve a place on IT Week Magazine's Top 50 Technology Innovators list in 2005 and 2006 and win several of San Diego Society for HR Management's Workplace Excellence Awards in 2005, 2006, and 2007.
