Scrum + Grumpy = Scrumpy, A Coincidence I’m Sure…
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Applying the scrum methodology during development of ‘Aetherial,’ reminds me of a quote from the composer Leonard Bernstein: “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” In theory, scrum seems quite suitable at creating these conditions. In practice though, our group has yet to get there. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Scrum, a term taken from rugby, is a development framework where a team creates a “product backlog” (which is a fancy term for “Giant To-Do List”) where the planned features for a game are divided into bite-sized chunks. Every week, or ‘sprint,” a team member takes one of these chunks and aims to complete it before the end of the sprint. During the sprint, our group has a ‘stand-up meeting,’ around noon to talk about our current progress and to make sure everybody is on the same page. At the end of the week, we end the sprint with a review to discuss what we completed (or failed to) and where to go from there. This more freeform and flexible framework is both scrum’s biggest strength and biggest weakness. At it’s best, a group can change course when it’s clear something isn’t working or can’t get done in time. At its worst, the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. For me personally, I do like the overall process and working within the Scrum framework. There is enough structure that it does not feel like I am one of six headless chickens, but not so much that it becomes stifling. For example, there was an assignment in my Graphics minor regarding animation. With scrum, I had the flexibility to ‘double-dip’ and focus on the animation portions of the product (and my assignment). With a more inflexible development framework, such as waterfall (where products are built on ‘milestones instead of ‘iterations’), there would have been a nonzero chance the animations I worked on would have been in a future milestone and the end result might have been a grumpy project manager or a tired graphics artist trying to make ends meet. The stand-up meetings help a lot for me as I do have a small (okay…moderate) procrastination problem and the meetings help mitigate it as the idea of not having something to show/say for it does not sit well with me. It’s peer pressure, but it’s a good kind. So how has Archon been doing as far as scrum is concerned? Well…  The above screengrab is damning enough evidence as is. As a group, none of us have worked in scrum before and our inexperience is obvious. The first sprint, we overestimated what we could do, and the second sprint, we underestimated. As for me, though it pains me to admit, I still have shortcomings when it comes to working in scrum. Time has always been one of my biggest problems. Not only because I have a learning disability that has hounded me my whole life, but also because my definition of ‘done’ is not as…flexible as it probably should be. I’ll just say the work hours in the spreadsheet do not cover weekends. It’s not all doom and gloom though. The first sprints resembling stumbles for an inexperienced group is to be expected and already we are showing improvement. Despite the screenshot not showing it, I have made things that are in the ‘done’ pile. Also, even though there has been more than one occasion where I thought to myself “Do I have to?” regarding stand-up meetings, the only time I missed one was because of illness. So however slow it may be, me and my group are moving forward. That’s all for this week. Goodbye, and take care.  |