Scrum

The goal of the daily meeting is not that everyone stand up

Scrum is a iterative software development process with a maximum team size around ten people. For larger projects one should split it into smaller scrums team to keep it effective.

Development Team

The development team is the people that work on the game. A max team size for scrum is ten people and if the team gets larger the process gets less effective. For larger projects it's best to split it into more scrums that work on different parts of the game.

Product backlog

All the things that need to be done are kept into a list called the product backlog. This list contain all the features, bugs and chores that need to be done on the game. Chores are things that need to be done but does not really improve the game directly, such as installing a build server for the development team. All things that should be done should be put in the backlog and they are then estimated by the team how long time they will take.

Product Owner

The product owner is the person that has the responsibility to prioritize the backlog. A role for the producer of the project.

Sprint

The team works in iterations and each one is called a sprint. All sprints have the same fixed length and two weeks are common. At the start of a sprint the team have a meeting and pick the things at the top of the backlog that they feel they get done over the sprint period. The items picked will be kept in a sprint backlog and split into smaller tasks if needed. No task should take longer then two days to make it easy to track the progress.

Daily Meeting

When the sprint is going on the team has a meeting each day in the morning. Each team member say what they did the other day, what they will do this day and if they see and problems that will stop them from completing the task for today. The last one is the important one as the goal is to get rid of problems that stop the team from working efficiently as early as possible. This meeting should be short and fast and no deep discussions should be done at it. The goal is to be aware of problems as soon as possible and not to turn the meeting into a problem that stops people from working. No more then one minute should be needed for each team members. Move along if people ramble and end the meeting if it goes over a set time so everyone can go back to work.

Scrum Meeting

If there is more then one scrum team a meeting with one member from each team can be held. A scrum of scrums. It works like the other daily meeting but here each team say what the team has done, what the team will do today and if any problems is slowing down the team.

Why Scrum is fundamentally broken (but we still use it) - 2014