Game Development Processes

Evolution uses Agile\Scrum (same thing?)

Bizarre uses Agile on one team and something else on the others.

I sort of like Agile, you get tasks, you complete them or flag up your impediments and they (hopefully) get fixed.

I think many studios are experimenting with scrum/agile approaches – a little bit of something from here and there. Anything to break the waterfall approach or notions that we can know whats going to be important at a daily granularity in more than 4 weeks time. While holistically it may seem inferior to not plan out everything to the smallest detail, pragmatically it’s much better to create process than can handle change/noise/errors. Even in industries where the process is very well known and keeps repeating, a failure to have some sort of change-management process is going to hurt – e.g. when a recession arrives.

High Moon Studios are big proponents of Scrum/Agile.

http://www.highmoonstudios.com/insiders/dev_diaries/index.php

Noel Llopis writes a bit more about it here:
http://gamesfromwithin.com/a-day-in-the-life

And Clinton Keith has some GDC slides on Agile here:
http://www.agilegamedevelopment.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

Scrum has worked very for me in small and large non-game software projects. I highly recommend it.

Gamasutra covered Scrum last year. The Game Development book by Heather Maxwell Chandler also has a section on Scrum.

We are taught to use SCRUM at the IT-University of Copenhagen and I have used it during all the production I have been part of I can also highly recommend it

If you want to find out more about Scrum and Agile techniques I’ll be speaking at a seminar in Dublin on 23rd November. Lero (the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre) organised this free seminar and Enterprise Ireland are hosting it at their offices.

You can find more details on the Goshido website.