Scrum
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I have had some limited experience with scrum before, but in a much reduced form compared to what we are practicing here. While we did compose a backlog and hold daily stand ups, we mostly just picked a task to do and worked on it, without much further direction. The sprints were simply times at which we reviewed what had been completed so far and discussed what to prioritize for next sprint. Here however, every sprint is preceded by the creation of tasks specifically for that sprint, all of it worked out cooperatively by the whole group. Every week there is something new to play, and you can clearly see the game take shape. I suppose the biggest impact any scrum implementation has on my work is in how the constant daily deadlines keep you from procrastinating and teach you routine and ultimately discipline in your work. That the daily stand ups appraise you of the daily progress of your team members is also very nice, since otherwise you can end up working in different directions, producing things that are wildly inconsistent. Less of a concern for code, especially as this is using a scripting language where inconsistency in code structure has little consequence due to the code being very flat, and also a fairly small project where bandaids and hotfixes are unlikely to grow out of control, compound and doom your project. For art however it is great to be able to comment on and discuss new sprites as soon as they are completed. Combined with several extra design meetings, if there is something you don’t like about the project, that’s only because you’ve washed your hands of it, as you were most certainly asked. Also very useful has been the careful planning of what the next sprint will contain. There is very clear progress from week to week, where otherwise one might end up with a dozen half finished products. Even if the final delivery of all tasks together had been the same, which I doubt, you cannot iterate on the design of something which is too unfinished to properly assess. Thus, you end up in the dark for longer about how your current design holds up, or how to design further without conflicting with what you already have.
No picture for this one, I choose death.  |