Scrum
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We are supposed to use a method called Scrum during this project. Apparently, it is a method that is used by many game development teams. Mostly it consists of a lot of meetings and a lot of communication. I personally think it works very well for our group. In the Sprint Planning Meetings, we plan what needs to be done during the coming sprint. These meetings make it very clear what we are supposed to do the following week, and it gives us an opportunity to ask questions about the different assets we are to work on during the sprint. The Sprint Review meetings are where we compile the work we have done during this sprint, check if the assets are completed, and put in the number of hours that we have put into each asset. After that we do a retrospect where we ask three questions about how the work has been going this sprint. These are good because you can discuss any difficulties during the sprint and also think about how we work best together as a group. In Scrum we also have stand up meetings every day. It is a meeting where you are supposed to stand up and tell the rest of the group what you have done since the last stand up, what you will do until the next, and what has been blocking you. It is only to take five to ten minutes. These are a bit harder to agree with. I understand that it is very useful when working in an office, but here in school it is difficult to make it work. To start with, it was hard to find a time that suited everyone in the group every day, second, it is annoying and time consuming to have to go to a meeting in school when you do not have anything else in school that day. You have to go to school, be there for five to ten minutes, and then go home again. I made it work by staying in school after the stand ups to work, but I know a lot of people who work better at home. Edit In the development of our game we used scrum as best we could. We had a meeting every Monday, sprint planning, to decide what needed to be done that week. It usually took between one and two hours. We discussed what was most important to finish during the sprint, and who was to do what. At the start of the project we used to have a stand up meeting every day, even on Mondays and Friday when we had other meetings. Later in the project we decided that it was unnecessary as we would not have made any progress between the meetings on the same day. We met at 12.10 everyday and everyone in the team told the rest what he/she had done since the previous meeting and what they are going to do until the next, and if there is anything blocking them from doing their jobs. On Fridays we had a sprint review meeting where we declared everything that had been done during the sprint and evaluated our work and teamwork during the week. I really liked working this way. It has been nice to always know what to do and where everyone else is at in the production. It has been really clear where the project is going and where it came from. I am a big fan of structure. The only thing I would have liked to have more of in our team is the common work sessions where everyone is in the same room working together on their sprint assets. The ones we had were really nice because every question could be answered directly, instead of having to wait for the person to reply online. I only would have liked to have more of them.  |