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Agile Game Development: Build, Play, Repeat, 2nd edition
Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (July 9, 2020) © 2021
- Clinton Keith
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In Agile Game Development, Clinton Keith offered game development team members the first complete blueprint for leveraging the power of Scrum and Agile methods to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; create games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for every development team member. Now, reflecting his unsurpassed experience helping more than 150 game development studios succeed, Keith has thoroughly revamped his classic guide for today’s radically transformed industry. The only Certified Scrum Trainer to help build 20 AAA-level games, Keith is singularly well-placed to help game developers solve the problems they actually face. In this edition, he:
- Addresses the modern challenges of mobile, free-to-play, and Massively Agile games
- Adds a completely new section on large-scale Agile game development, and new chapters on managing the first release, forming and leading Agile teams, game pipelines, and more
- Presents many new date stories about the experiences of actual game development teams, with actionable takeaways
- Illuminates advanced Agile projects through new “Things to Try” sidebars
- Covers Kanban and other Agile methodologies as well as Scrum
This 2nd Edition offers today’s game developers even more value – no matter what types of games they’re developing, what development roles they play, or what environments they’re working in.
- By Clinton Keith, the only Certified Scrum Trainer who’s built 20 AAA games
- Contains several new chapters, including an all-new section on Agile for large teams and live games
- Presents more of Keith’s popular stories about actual game development teams, and new “Things to Try” sidebars illuminating advanced Agile practices
- Now covers Kanban and other Agile approaches alongside Scrum
- Reflects Keith’s extraordinary in-the-trenches experience helping 150+ game development studios succeed
This edition contains extensive new coverage based on the author’s last decade of consulting with 150 game development organizations on the more effective use of Agile methods, as well as transformative changes in the game industry itself, including mobile, free-to-play, and more. Extensively updated throughout, it contains:
- More new stories about the experiences of actual game development teams, with actionable takeaways
- Many new “Things to Try” sidebars illuminating advanced Agile practices proven in real projects
- New coverage of Agile methodologies beyond Scrum
- All-new chapters on cross-functional teams, Kanban, managing the first release. team formation, leading Agile teams, Massively Agile Game Environments (MAGE), and game pipelines
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
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.
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