[game_edu] SCRUM in Game Development

[Anthony Hart-Jones]

  I'd say that sounds like the UK games industry to me, especially in
AAA studios.  The last place I worked, we had got used to a cycle of
hectic crunch before every deadline, then company-sponsored 'thank-you'
activities (paint-ball, karting, etc.) as a reward for hitting the
deadlines.  When we shifted to an Agile cycle (Scrum-lite, the COO
called it), the cycle of crunch and crash persisted.
  When you have a three-week sprint-cycle, that is a very strange thing
to see...

  In my experience, many AAA studios are still more like university than
most other business environments.  It may be something to do with the
need to encourage creativity, or it could just be that designers like me
are a bad influence on otherwise disciplined programmers...

On 08/01/2011 21:11, Philip Tan wrote:

> One thing about Scrum is that there really isn't any downtime built

> into the typical sprint cycle. As soon as one ends, you're immediately

> planning the next. In practice, this is dramatically different from

> the ebb and flow of most college coursework, where effort tends to

> ramp up immediately prior to a big milestone or assessment. Students

> are very used to cycles of crunching hard before deadlines and

> crashing afterwards.