Agile Game Development: Build, Play, Repeat

The definitive guide to more effective and personally fulfilling game development with Agile Methodsnow revamped to reflect ten more years of experience and improvements

Game development is in crisisfacing bloated budgets, impossible schedules, unmanageable complexity, and death-march overtime. It's no wonder so many development studios are struggling to survive. Fortunately, there is a solution. Agile and Lean methods have revolutionized development in the game development industry. In Agile Game Development, long-time game developer and consultant Clinton Keith shows exactly how these methods have been successfully applied to the unique challenges of modern game development.

Clint has spent more than 25 years developing games and training and coaching hundreds of game development teams. Drawing on this unparalleled expertise, he shows how teams can use the practices of Scrum and Kanban, customized to game development, to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; craft games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for development teams at the same time.

• Contains several new chapters on live games, leadership, and coaching, including an all-new section on Agile for large teams of up to 1000 developers
• Updates to all chapters to reflect a decade of experience with more than 200 studios
• Now covering Kanban and other Agile approaches alongside Scrum
• Understanding Agile goals, roles, and practices in the context of game development
• Discovering how Agile benefits every specialty in game development from art to QA
• Communicating and planning your game's vision, features, and progress

Game developers and leaders are recognizing the modern challenges of gaming. Game development organizations need a far better way to work. Agile Game Development gives them thatand brings the profitability, creativity, and fun back to game development.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword xxvii

Preface xxix

Part I: The Problem and the Solution 1

Chapter 1: The Crisis Facing Game Development 3

The Solutions in This Chapter 3

A Brief History of Game Development 4

Iterating on Arcade Games 5

Early Methodologies 6

The Death of the Hit-or-Miss Model 8

The Crisis 9

Less Innovation 9

Less Value 10

Work Environment 10

Mobile/Live Challenges 10

What Good Looks Like 11

Summary 12

Additional Reading 12

Chapter 2: Agile and Lean Development 13

The Solutions in This Chapter 13

What Is Agile? 13

What Is Lean? 14

Why Game Development Is Hard 16

Learning from Postmortems 16

The Problems 19

Applying Both Agile and Lean 23

Why Use Agile and Lean for Game Development? 24

Cost and Quality 24

Finding the Fun First 25

Iterate More, Fail Fast 26

Agile Values Applied to Game Development 27

Lean Principles Applied to Game Development 30

What an Agile Project Looks Like 33

Agile Development 35

Projects Versus Live Development 36

Pre-Deployment Releases 37

The Challenge of Agile and Lean 37

What Good Looks Like 38

Summary 38

Additional Reading 38

Part II: Scrum and Kanban 39

Chapter 3: Scrum 41

The Solutions in This Chapter 42

The History of Scrum 43

The Big Picture 44

The Values of Scrum 47

The Principles of Scrum 47

Product Backlog, Sprints, and Releases 48

The Product Backlog 48

Sprints 50

Releases 51

Scrum Roles 52

The Scrum Team 52

Development Team 54

Scrum Master 54

Product Owner 59

Customers and Stakeholders 62

Chickens and Pigs 64

Scaling Scrum 65

What Good Looks Like 65

Summary 65

Additional Reading 65

Chapter 4: Sprints 67

The Solutions in This Chapter 67

The Big Picture 67

Planning 68

The Sprint Goal 69

Part One: Identifying the Sprint Goal 69

Part Two: Planning How to Achieve the Sprint Goal 70

Length 74

Tracking Progress 78

Task Cards 78

Burndown Chart 79

The Burndown Trend 80

Task Board 82

War Room 84

The Daily Scrum Meeting 84

The Practice 84

Improving the Daily Scrum 86

Sprint Reviews 88

Review Format for Smaller Games 88

Remote Stakeholders 89

Studio Stakeholders 90

Players 90

Honest Feedback 90

Retrospectives 90

The Meeting 91

Posting and Tracking Results 92

Sprint Challenges 92

Sprint Interrupted 93

Sprint Resets 93

Problems with the Sprint Goal 94

Running Out of Work 96

What Good Looks Like 96

Summary 97

Additional Reading 97

Chapter 5: Great Teams 99

What Are Great Teams? 100

The Solutions in This Chapter 101

An Agile Approach to Teams 101

Cross-Discipline Teams 102

Generalizing Specialists 104

Self-Management 105

Team Size 105

What Good Looks Like 108

Summary 109

Additional Reading 110

Chapter 6: Kanban 111

The Solutions in This Chapter 111

What Is Kanban? 112

Visualizing the Workflow 112

Measuring the Workflow 113

Managing the Workflow 114

Improving the Workflow 117

Reducing Batch Sizes and Waste 117

Reducing Handoffs 118

Responding to Bottlenecks 118

The Difference with Scrum 120

What Good Looks Like 121

Summary 121

Additional Reading 122

Chapter 7: The Product Backlog 123

The Solutions in This Chapter 123

A Fateful Meeting 124

Why Design Documents Fail 125

The Product Backlog 126

Product Backlog Items 126

Ordering the Product Backlog 127

Continual Planning 128

Allowing for Change and Emergence 128

Encouraging Team Engagement and Alignment 129

Creating the Product Backlog 129

Managing the Product Backlog 131

Backlog Refinement 131

Who Attends the Refinement and When? 132

Techniques for Ordering the Product Backlog 132

Defining Done 137

Types of Debt 137

Managing Debt 138

Development DoDs and Stakeholder DoDs 139

QA and DoDs 140

Sets of Done 141

Challenges 142

Dysfunctional Product Ownership 142

The Proxy Product Owner 144

Product Owner Committees 144

Silo Product Owners 145

Attention Deficit Product Owner 146

Tunnel Vision Product Owner 147

Distant Product Owner 149

What Good Looks Like 152

Summary 152

Additional Reading 153

Part III: Agile Game Development 155

Chapter 8: User Stories 157

Speaking Different Languages 158

The Solutions in This Chapter 158

What Are User Stories? 159

Levels of Detail 160

Acceptance Criteria 161

Using Index Cards for User Stories 163

INVEST in User Stories 164

Independent 164

Negotiable 165

Valuable 166

Estimable 167

Sized Appropriately 168

Testable 168

User Roles 169

Collecting Stories 171

Splitting Stories 174

Split Along Research or Prototype Dependencies 175

Split Along Conjunctions 175

Split by Progression or Value 176

Other Splitting Tips 176

Advantages of User Stories 176

Face-to-Face Communication 177

Everyone Can Understand User Stories 177

What Good Looks Like 178

Summary 179

Additional Reading 179

Chapter 9: Agile Release Planning 181

The Solutions in This Chapter 181

What Is Release Planning? 182

Release Planning Meetings 183

Chartering a Shared Vision 184

Estimating Feature Size 186

Velocity 186

How Much Effort Should We Spend Estimating? 187

Where Are Story Sizes Estimated? 188

Story Points 189

Alternatives to Story Points 194

Release Planning with Story Points 195

Updating the Release Plan 197

Marketing Demos and Hardening Sprints 198

What Good Looks Like 200

Summary 200

Additional Reading 201

Chapter 10: Video Game Project Management 203

Midnight Club Story 203

The Solutions in This Chapter 204

Minimum Viable Game 205

Contracts 207

Hitting Fixed Ship Dates 208

Managing Risk 209

Incorporating Risk in the Product Backlog 210

The Need for Stages 211

The Development Stages 212

Mixing the Stages 213

Managing Stages with Releases 214

Lean Production 215

Production Debt 216

The Challenge of Scrum in Production 218

Lean Production with Kanban 220

Working with Scrum 234

Transitioning Scrum Teams 235

What Good Looks Like 235

Summary 236

Additional Reading 236

Chapter 11: Faster Iterations 237

The Solutions in This Chapter 238

Where Does Iteration Overhead Come From? 238

Measuring and Displaying Iteration Time 239

Measuring Iteration Times 239

Displaying Iteration Times 240

Personal and Build Iteration 241

Personal Iteration 241

Build Iteration 242

What Good Looks Like 250

Summary 250

Additional Reading 250

Part IV: Agile Disciplines 251

Chapter 12: Agile Technology 253

The Solutions in This Chapter 254

The Problems 254

Uncertainty 254

Change Causes Problems 255

Cost of Late Change 256

Too Much Architecture Up Front 257

An Agile Approach 258

Extreme Programming (XP) 259

Debugging 265

Optimization 266

What Good Looks Like 269

Summary 270

Additional Reading 270

Chapter 13: Agile Art and Audio 271

The Solutions in This Chapter 271

Concerns About Agile 273

Art Leadership 274

Art on a Cross-Discipline Team 275

Creative Tension 275

Art QA 276

Building Art Knowledge 277

Overcoming the Not Done Yet Syndrome 278

Budgets 279

Audio at the End of the Chain 280

Shifting to Kanban 281

What Good Looks Like 281

Summary 282

Additional Reading 282

Chapter 14: Agile Design 283

The Solutions in This Chapter 284

Designs Do Not Create Knowledge 284

The Game Emerges at the End 285

Designing with Scrum 286

A Designer for Every Team? 286

The Role of Documentation 286

Parts on the Garage Floor 288

Set-Based Design 291

Lead Designer Role 295

Designer as Product Owner? 295

What Good Looks Like 296

Summary 296

Additional Reading 296

Chapter 15: Agile QA and Production 297

Agile QA 297

The Solutions in This Chapter 298

The Problem with QA 298

Most QA Is Just QC 299

Agile Testing Is Not a Phase 300

The Role of QA on an Agile Game Team 301

QA, Embedded or in Pools? 303

How Many Testers per Team? 303

Using a Bug Database 304

Play-Testing 305

The Future of QA 307

Agile Production 307

The Role of a Producer on an Agile Project 308

Producer as Scrum Master 309

Producer as Product Owner Support 309

Producer as Product Owner 310

The Future of Production 311

What Good Looks Like 311

Summary 311

Additional Reading 312

Part V: Getting Started 313

Chapter 16: The Myths and Challenges of Scrum 315

The Solutions in This Chapter 315

Silver Bullet Myths 316

Scrum Will Solve All of Your Problems for You 316

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt 316

Scrum Challenges 321

Scrum as a Tool for Process and Culture Change 321

Scrum Is About Adding Value, Not Task Tracking 323

Status Quo Versus Continual Improvement 323

Cargo Cult Scrum 324

Scrum Is Not for Everyone 326

Overtime 326

Crunch 327

What Good Looks Like 329

Summary 330

Additional Reading 330

Chapter 17: Working with Stakeholders 331

The Solutions in This Chapter 332

Who Are the Stakeholders? 332

The Challenges 332

Focus Comes Too Late 333

Milestone Payments and Collaboration 334

Limited Iteration 335

First-Party Problems 335

Portfolios Drive Dates 336

Building Trust, Allaying Fear 337

The Fears 337

Understanding Agile 338

Publisher-Side Product Owners 339

Meeting Project Challenges Early 340

Managing the Production Plan 341

Allaying the Fears 342

Agile Contracts 342

Iterating Against a Plan 344

Fixed Ship Dates 345

Agile Pre-Production 348

The Stage-Gate Model 348

What Good Looks Like 350

Summary 350

Additional Reading 351

Chapter 18: Team Transformations 353

The Solutions in This Chapter 353

The Three Stages of Team Transformation 353

The Apprentice Stage 355

The Journeyman Stage 359

The Master Stage 367

What Good Looks Like 369

Summary 370

Additional Reading 370

Part VI: Growing Beyond 371

Chapter 19: Coaching Teams for Greatness 373

What Is a Great Team? 373

Why Coaching? 374

The Solutions in This Chapter 374

Coaching Skills 374

My Path to Coaching 374

The Coaching Stance 375

Facilitation 377

Coaching Tools 379

Coaching Teams to Higher Performance 381

Psychological Safety 381

Common Goals 382

Shared Accountability 382

Working Agreement 382

Root Cause Analysis 383

Team Maturity Models 384

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team 384

The Tuckman Model 385

Situational Leadership 386

Coaching Tools and Practices 387

Lighten the Mood 387

Love Card Wall 388

Notes of Encouragement 389

PechaKucha Introductions 389

Socialize the Team 390

Measure Team Health 391

Group Confession 391

360 Reviews 392

What Good Looks Like 393

Summary 393

Additional Reading 393

Chapter 20: Self-Organization and Leadership 395

The Solutions in This Chapter 396

Self-Organization 396

Valve Software 397

Supercell 398

Growing Teams 399

Leadership 403

Agile Leadership 403

Studio Leadership 404

Discipline Leadership 405

Director Roles 406

Mentors 407

Reviews 407

Servant Leadership 408

Systems Thinking 409

Turning a Vicious Cycle into a Virtuous Cycle 409

Seeking Out Systems 411

Intrinsic Motivation 411

Autonomy 412

Mastery 412

Purpose 412

Flow 412

Finding the Right Challenge 414

Increasing Skills 414

Studio Coaches 415

Shifting Roles 416

Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS 417

Adoption Strategies 418

Beachhead Teams 419

Full-Scale Deployment 422

What Good Looks Like 426

Summary 426

Additional Reading 426

Chapter 21: Scaling Agile Game Teams 429

The Solutions in This Chapter 429

Challenges to Scaling 430

Loss of Vision 430

Adding People Late 431

Communication Among Large Teams 431

Should You Scale Up? 433

Scaling the Wrong Process 433

The MAGE Framework 434

Whole Game Focus 435

Communication, Purpose, and Autonomy 435

Systems Thinking 435

Scaling the Right Way 436

The Product Backlog 436

Tools and Mind Maps 436

Pooling Functions and Dispersing Components 437

Pillars 438

Team Organization 438

Feature Teams 438

Component Teams 439

Production Teams 439

Support Teams 440

Tool Teams 442

Pool Teams 443

Integration Teams 443

Feature Area Teams 443

Communities of Practice 444

Product Ownership 445

Additional Roles 447

Project Management Support 447

Supplemental Roles 448

Pillar Champions 448

Releases 448

Release Planning 449

Rolling Out the Release Plan 451

Forming Teams 452

Updating the Release Plan 452

Using Project Boards 453

Sprints 454

Aligning Sprint Dates 454

The Scrum of Scrums 455

Sprint Planning 458

Sprint Reviews 458

Sprint Retrospectives 459

Managing Dependencies 460

Team Formation 461

Release Planning 461

Team Dependency Management 462

Reducing Expert Dependencies 462

Distributed and Dispersed Development 463

Distributed versus Dispersed 463

Challenges to Distributed Development 464

Challenges to Dispersed Development 466

What Good Looks Like 468

Summary 468

Additional Reading 469

Chapter 22: Live Game Development 471

The Solutions in This Chapter 472

Games As a Service 472

Why Agility for Live Games? 473

DevOps and Lean Startup 473

Feedback Loops 474

Live Games and Fighter Aircraft 474

Live Game Feedback Loops 475

Measuring the Feedback Loop 478

Part One: Plan 478

Have a Vision 479

Model the Players 479

Establish the Goals 480

Identify an Incremental Step 480

Develop the Hypothesis 480

Part Two: Develop 482

Map and Measure the Entire Pipeline 482

Identify Ways to Improve the Pipeline 483

Reduce the Batch Size 485

QA for Live Games 487

Part Three: Deploy and Support 487

Continuous Delivery 488

Live Support Tools 490

Part Four: Measure and Learn 494

Measure Results 494

Do Retrospective Actuals and Update Your Vision 495

What Good Looks Like 495

Summary 496

Additional Reading 496

Chapter 23: There Are No Best Practices 497

The Solutions in This Chapter 497

Visualizing Your Work 498

Feature Boards 498

Story Mapping 501

Developing for New Platforms 504

Launch Title Development 505

Parallel Development 506

Agile and Indie Game Development508

The Draw of Indie Development 508

The Challenges of Indie Development 509

How Agile Development Helps 509

What Good Looks Like 510

Summary 511

Additional Reading 511

Conclusion 513

Index 515

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Over the course of 35 years, Clinton Keith has gone from programming avionics for advanced fighter jets and underwater robots to developing and leading on hit video game titles such as Midtown Madness, Midnight Club, and Darkwatch, among a dozen others as a CTO and Director of Product Development. He introduced the video game industry to Agile practices in 2003 and now trains and coaches video game teams. Clinton is the author of the first edition of this book, Agile Game Development with Scrum, and co-author of Gear Up! Advanced Game Practices. His website is www.ClintonKeith.com.

Zusammenfassung

The definitive guide to more effective and personally fulfilling game development with Agile Methodsnow revamped to reflect ten more years of experience and improvements

Game development is in crisisfacing bloated budgets, impossible schedules, unmanageable complexity, and death-march overtime. It's no wonder so many development studios are struggling to survive. Fortunately, there is a solution. Agile and Lean methods have revolutionized development in the game development industry. In Agile Game Development, long-time game developer and consultant Clinton Keith shows exactly how these methods have been successfully applied to the unique challenges of modern game development.

Clint has spent more than 25 years developing games and training and coaching hundreds of game development teams. Drawing on this unparalleled expertise, he shows how teams can use the practices of Scrum and Kanban, customized to game development, to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; craft games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for development teams at the same time.

• Contains several new chapters on live games, leadership, and coaching, including an all-new section on Agile for large teams of up to 1000 developers
• Updates to all chapters to reflect a decade of experience with more than 200 studios
• Now covering Kanban and other Agile approaches alongside Scrum
• Understanding Agile goals, roles, and practices in the context of game development
• Discovering how Agile benefits every specialty in game development from art to QA
• Communicating and planning your game's vision, features, and progress

Game developers and leaders are recognizing the modern challenges of gaming. Game development organizations need a far better way to work. Agile Game Development gives them thatand brings the profitability, creativity, and fun back to game development.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Clinton Keith
• Verlag: Pearson Academic
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Taschenbuch
• Erschienen: 31.07.2020
• EAN: 9780136527817
• ISBN: 978-0-13-652781-7
• Seiten: 576
• Abmessung: 100 mm x 100 mm x 100 mm
• Gewicht: 900 g
• Serien: Pearson; Signature; Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)
• Themen: Naturwissenschaften, Medizin, Informatik, Technik > Informatik, EDV > Programmiersprachen; Ratgeber > Hobby, Haus > Spielen, Raten