This week I am going to talk a little bit about the work method my team is required to use and how it affected our development process.
My team and I work with a method called scrum. Basically how each work week looks like is that we pick a number of items from a list of things that need to be done, and work with them throughout the week. At the end of the week we review how far we have gotten with the items and whether or not we are satisfied with how they turned out.
When we first started working with scrum, I quite liked the method. I liked being able to very clearly decide what should be worked on each week, and how one could see the progress we made. We had meetings every day except for weekends, which I felt encouraged a quick pace. Since we get a lot of free time to spend on the project, procrastination would probably be something to easily fall victim to. However, because of the meetings I always had stuff to do.
Example of the product backlog for enemies. We take items from this list and put them in the sprint plan.
This last week I have felt like I lost a bit of momentum however. We still have meetings, we still pick items that we want to work on. Most of the small items are done. Now we are working on refining items such as player movement and adding the boss to the game. Although we are talking about scrapping the boss since we are unsure on whether or not we can make it in time for the beta in less than two weeks. I think one of the reasons for me feeling like I have lost momentum is because in the beginning we were marking items as done much quicker. Now with a few items that technically can be iterated upon infinitely and never really be completed, it feels like less progress is being made.
In conclusion, I think scrum has benefited our development process by making it easy for us to track each others progress and discuss what needs to be done next. I am not sure if it is helping us finish the project but I do not think that it is actually hindering us in doing so.
– Adam Olsson
Adam Olssons game design blog 
Your blog is clear the benefits for your group with scrum and how it correlates to the progress of the game. I think it is pretty common to feel that at the end of the project progress is much slower, regardless of what it is someone is doing. The new things getting implemented gives new depth to the game. But in the end most of the work is done with the things already implemented. It is just polish, like sandpaper after building a patio. It doesn’t seem as a big thing as when building but equally important. That way people can actually enjoy the patio. But don’t get stuck in polish, at some time it needs to be presented to someone else.
That’s my take on it. Have a nice day
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