Practical benefits of Agile and Scrum

As I wrote in my previous blog post, I am currently involved with a game project at my university. During this project, I am also doing some research about the work method Agile and Scrum. I am very curious about both Agile and Scrum and how it affects projects and the persons involved with it. This project gives me an opportunity to actually see in real-time how Agile combined with Scrum works in practice and what the benefits are. The full results of my research will be written down in a postmortem at the end of the project (June 2016). Until then, I will present some of my observations here on this blog.

I will do this research by making sure that I and the other team members are following the practices of Agile. We will combine those with the practices of Scrum. This makes it easy for me to observe the benefits of Agile combined with Scrum in every sprint of the project. The sprint cycle for this project is one week, so that means that I will write down the observed benefits once every week. I will look at how Agile and Scrum provides benefits to the team members, the result of the production and the reception of the game. To make sure that Agile and Scrum is the reason for the observed benefits, I will compare the results with previous projects I have been involved with. Some of these projects have used the Waterfall method, some have used the Agile method without Scrum and some have used the Waterfall method combined with Scrum.

The project has been going on for 2.5 weeks now and I can already see some interesting results. The biggest benefit so far is that we had a working prototype of the game in the first 3.5 days of the production. This prototype included a level design, art assets within the desired art style, animations, a working split-screen feature, a small combat system, health points, AI-enemies and more.

When I compare the results of 3.5 days of production with previous projects, I realize that this benefit came from the Agile method:

• In both a project where Waterfall combined with Scrum was used and in a project where the Waterfall method alone was used, the game were not at this playable state after 3.5 days. It took more than four weeks of production to reach this playable state.
• In a project where the Agile method alone was used, the game were at this playable state after 3.5 days.

The fact that the team had a playable game in that short amount of time have provided benefits to the team members. I can see that everyone feels happy about the project and how it is proceeding. They feel calm about how how the game will be in the end of the project and this keeps their stress level down. They can see the results of their efforts presented in the game and this makes them happy and encouraged to produce better results. They think that it is fun to go to the office and work on the game.

When I compare these results with other projects, I realize that most of these benefits came from the Agile method:

• In a project where Waterfall alone was used, the team members did not feel happy about their efforts, since they could not see the results in a playable game. This took away the fun of creating assets for a video game and that resulted in less quality of the assets produced. The team members felt stressed when it was time to build a playable version of the game, since problems showed up late in the production. The team members enthusiasm to go to the office and work dropped and they often tried to find reasons to stay at home.
• In a project where the Agile method alone was used, the team members did not feel stressed at any time during the project. They were happy to work on the game and the enthusiasm to produce high quality assets were high.

The reception of the game have been good. Playtesters are impressed with how the game are right now and it is easy for them to provide feedback on many different aspects of the game.

As with previous observed benefits, I realize that this is because of the Agile method when I look at previous projects:

• In both a project where Waterfall combined with Scrum was used and in a project where the Waterfall method alone was used, the reception of the games after 2.5 weeks of production was not as good. We did not feel as if we had impressed anyone with our results. Playtesters had a hard time to provide feedback that was valuable to us. They could only comment on things that were broken in the games, rather than what they thought about the features in the games.
• In a project where the Agile method alone was used, the reception of the results after two weeks of production (that was the time-frame of the project) was good. Playtesters were impressed with how far we had taken the game in only two weeks and they could test and comment on the features of the game, rather than things that were broken.

So. There are clearly many benefits with using the Agile method combined with Scrum, rather than Waterfall when producing a video game. The benefits shows almost immediately and provide positive results during the start of the project. Next week, our project will step into the mid-part of the production. It will be interesting to see how Agile and Scrum affects that stage of the project.

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