Working with scrum – Has it been beneficial?
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For the duration of the project, we as students were asked to work and apply the scrum framework to improve our workflow and thus the quality of our final product. In our case, the framework consists of weekly sprints in combination with daily stand-up meetings in person. Furthermore and in comparison to previous projects, we are working with a product backlog to keep sight on all the assets and artifacts that are needed for our current project. In this blog entry, I am going to talk about how the above has influenced our project and if it has been beneficial so far.
nice illustration that also describes how we apply scrum for our project, except that we have weekly sprints instead of 2-4 week long sprints. (image source)
First, let’s talk about the backlog. In my opinion, this has been a great addition and I think the advantages of having a backlog are obvious. It helped me and the team to keep track of what assets are needed and in what stage of the production cycle they are currently in and our project manager is doing a great job keeping everything up to date. At any given point of time, I knew what my team is currently working on and how the project is progressing. Additionally, the daily stand-up meetings greatly contributed to that. We are meeting daily at lunch time, exchanging ideas and talking about what we have worked on since the last meeting, what issues we have had and what our plans for the rest of the day are. However, I must admit that due to our group consisting out of only four members, the daily stand-up meetings have been quite short. In hindsight, conducting the meetings online through a messenger (or on discord for example) would have probably resulted in the same. Some of my team mates spend more time walking to campus than attending the meeting, which is not optimal in my opinion. I often hear the argument that meeting in person has a different psychological effect on you and hence improves the efficiency (you don’t want to let your team mates down in person), but from my experience with my group so far, I can not confirm this statement. I personally value the daily meetings though, given that the time is convenient for me and sharing thoughts in person is more pleasant in my opinion. There is also always the opportunity to talk about struggles and how the team can help the individual, which is great. Every Monday, we plan our sprint for the rest of the week, with having our sprint review on Friday afternoons. I think working in sprints is a good opportunity to prevent crunching at the end of the project. During sprint planning, the team talks about what the milestones are for the upcoming Friday and what risks every individual might encountered while working on the assets. However, I am unsure about how it has affected the workflow of me and my team, given that we are not blessed by having a second artist and a second programmer, so everyone was very focused on their own share given the heavier workload. There was also no danger of doing assets or scripts twice, which is a plus. In the end, I am not sure if the result would have been different without having a sprint plan (we are basically non-stop sprinting anyway), but it is good to create coherence amongst the work of all of the team members and yet again to see at what stage the project is currently in. I think in the end it is more about individual motivation and discipline to work on the project and trusting your team that they do their share, which has fortunately worked out so far. I can whole-heartedly confirm nonetheless that working within scrum has been a great learning experience so far that I am happy to rely on for upcoming projects. Until next week!  |
