Blog Post 3 – Scrum

So far Scrum has, in my opinion, been a positive experience. At first it felt a bit wonky and complicated with all the different spreadsheets that had to be filled in, daily stand up meetings to attend, but by now I’ve grown accustomed to it and understand the purpose of at least most aspects of the method.

One of my favorite aspects of the method is the product backlog. While it is annoying to fill in, having a definite list over every single artifact in the game and when it needs to be done has been incredibly useful when it comes to planning the work. The dates help you visualize your workload, meaning you can adjust your daily planning and so on. It also helps you focus on the current artifacts that needs to be done, rather than worrying about something that doesn’t need to be done until say after the Beta. It also forces you to work on things that needs to be done at the moment, rather than overworking on more distant, not as critical features.

For me personally I feel like having the structure the weekly sprints give helps me be more productive. Rather than having say 20 features that need to be done in 4 weeks, you have 5 that needs to be done in one week. Even if the number of features is the same, it feels easier to accomplish.  The weekly sprint goals and the daily stand up meetings also helps against procrastination, as you feel a greater responsibility towards your group to complete your assigned artifacts. Personally I’d feel bad if I show up to one of our daily stand up meetings without having progress to report. It creates a more direct sense of accountability rather than a more floating goal of promising to have something done “next week” etc. If you say in a stand up meeting that you’re going to “complete the bee animation” that day or something like that it creates a greater pressure to get it done.

Lastly I’d like to say that having a minimum viable product has been very useful. Having a “finished” version of the game at such an early stage really lets you spot the weaknesses in the design, and furthermore gives you much more time to polish it. This in combination with play testing let us, to give an example, know that some people had a hard time distinguishing the main bee in our game from the swarm bees. Consequently, I’ve now given our main bee a flying cap! Thanks for reading.

Fashionable! (I realize I’ve included a bee picture in every single one of my posts. I’m not sorry.)