Chapter II - Agile Development

The Agile Manifest

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value: - Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - Working software over comprehensive documentation - Customer collaboration over contract negotiation - Responding to change over following a plan

Feature Creep: Are features that are added to a project after the original scope is defined. The main reasons to happen: 1. Stake holders see the game progress and request for new features 2. A feature doesn’t live up to its expectations so more work is added. Its not a bad thing unless the budget and/or schedule remain unchanged as work is added.

“Knowledge comes only when we have the controller in hand and are playing the game at decent frame rate on the target machine. The only way to recognize the fun is to play it”

The uncertainty around the project is highest at the concept definition and slowly drops as a product or feature set is testable on the target machine. The graphic show it

A waterfall project carries hundreds of uncertain features forward to the testing phases - called alpha and beta - just before shipping. An agile project eliminates the uncertainty in small iterations that include every part of development.

Overoptimistic Schedules: Task estimation is not an exact science. Even when we estimate simple things ins daily life unanticipated problems crop up and throw off our estimates: - The difference in experience and productivity between two people who have a task assigned to them - How many other tasks a person is working on at single time - The stability of the build and tools - The iterative nature of a task: It’s never certain how many interations are going to be necessary for tunning and polishing a feature

The Challenge of Production

Pre-production: Is the exploration of what the game is. The challenge is ti find the fun of the game

Production: The challenge of production is to maximize the efficiency, minimize waste and create predictability

Most game projects cannot afford the luxury of entering production when they are ready. The exploration of what is fun and the range of mechanics to mass-produce are difficult to schedule.

Some assets are ready for production earlier than others. Our knowlede of budgets and quality of what the game should ship determines the timing of when the asset enters production.

“I’ never subscribed to the style of documentation that attempts to predict the future, mostly because my crystal ball has long been out for repair. Having said this, I do end up writing a lot. I find it useful as a thinking tool. Trying to share an idea with a large team is difficult to do and even more so if that idea hasn’t been fully thought through. Writing it down helps me to not only realize where the gaps are but also to work out the details. The result is clearer communication” Senta, Jakobsen, COO, EA DICE

Cost and Quality

Publishers an developers are trying to keep costs down on development by doing the following: - Seeking opportunities to outsource asset creation and code development - Relying on middleware solutions - Reducing the amount of content (releasing a game with eight hours of gameplay rather than sixteen)

Publishers are also trying to reduce the number of games that lose money for them by doing the following:

• Relying on greater proportion of licensed properties such movies based games
• Relying more on sequels and older franchises that have been successful in the past
• Taking fewer chances on new ideas

This can reduce the quality of games on the market. Agile help us “find the fun” and eliminate some of the most notorious sources of wasted work common to game dev.

Finding the Fun First

A benefit of iterative development is to develop a product in small steps and incrementally add features that satisfy the customer in the fastest and most economical way. A fun game is more appealing to players and the results in more sales. "Find the fun" is the mantra of any iterative and incremental game development project. Fun is only found with teh controller in your hand..

Agile Values Applied to Game Development

1. _Individuals and Interactions_ Over Processs and Tools By promoting teams able to solve many of these problems on their own. They manage the smallest level of details but not the highest levels. They urburden leadership of the role of managing minor details. They enable leadership to focus on the big picture.

Teams start taking on larger problems as they discover they can take a small amount of ownership to solve the smallest problems. They begin asking for more ownership in other areas:

• In creating better team scructures that can solve more problems by reducing external dependencies and improving focus on problem solving
• By identifying risks early and addressing them before they become problems.
• By identifying and growing leaders among themselves.

2. Working Game Over Comprehensive Design Some form of design documentation is necessary. Communicating what is known about the project up front has great value. But If all assumptions about the system being created before discovering what was fun about it, much of the work is wasted. If the project sticks to the detailed plan, then it won’t be the best game possible.

3. Costumer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation Fixed-milestones deliverables have led to an adversarial relationship between developers and publishers. Both recognize the need for change to improve the game but lack the necessary level of trust to allow the change to occur.

Collaboration between developer and publisher should be valued more than fixed contract. Outside our industry, many contracts in an agile environment follow the time and materials form, which is where the client pays for the cost of the last iteration.

4. Responding to change Over Following a Plan Expading project teams and ever-increasing feature and hardware complexities have driven managers to turn to increasingly detailed planning. Not only our plataforms change frequently, but creating a fun, innovative game is always challenging.

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