The iterative and incremental development — Scrum
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At the very beginning of the course Game Design 2: Game Development, we chose a game concept document, and then in the next ten weeks, we were going to develop this concept into a real game. In the process, we were taught a framework called scrum to help us to manage product development. What is scrum? I was really confused when I first learned about scrum, but when our group actually applied scrum to developing, I understood how it worked. Scrum is a framework for managing software development. From my current understanding, it can be roughly divided into several workflows: product backlog, sprint planning, sprint, sprint review and releasable increments. I will go into more detail on how scrum works in a group.
The product backlog contains everything that our group needs to do for our product. This product backlog list needs to be in order. Then we select some of the requirements that we feel we need to do first in the product backlog and put them into sprint planning, which means these requirements need to be done before the next sprint. I have to say that my group was not really good at sprint planning at first. We planed too many things or fewer things in the sprint planning in the first two or three weeks, but we are gradually learning, changing and getting better. Then what we need to do next is to start developing the requirements on the list and do as much as possible before we have the sprint review. During the sprint, every twenty-four hours we should have a daily scrum, which is a fifteen minutes stand up meeting for track the progress. After the sprint, we need a sprint review to check that if the team members have completed the sprint plan. If they didn’t finish all the things that should be done. Then the group should put the thing hasn’t done back to product backlog or next sprint planning. Every time after a sprint review, there should be some releasable increments. This is my current understanding of scrum. If there is anything misunderstanding or not good enough, welcome to point out my mistake!  |
