Now that we know what waterfall, I will talk a bit more about what this blog is all about Agile and Scrum.
Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development method for managing software projects and product or application development. all that follows will be a brief description of what it is and I will go in further details later on, don't you guys worry. So Scrum is infact a type of Agile approach which is used widely in software developments. Scrum is a specific type of Agile,since it is called as an agile project management framework. Now let's think an hypothetical case where after years of hard work, you and your teams have just shipped the game you have worked so hard. There were a lot of false starts and dead ends. However, just imagine if you and your teams could relive the same project but with the experience you gained developing this game. Do you think it would be an advcantage for you ? Of course, every company CEO in the world would sacrifice their first born child for this. Agile development primarly focuses on building knowledge about value, cost, and schedule and adjusting the plan to match reality.
from what I learned and could see, Scrum does not answer any questions, it is not an all seeing crystal ball. However, it surfaces a lot of questions about inneficiencies, disfunction, team allocation that each company has to adapt to.
Alright so how scrums goes is pretty simple. First of all you've got the Stakeholders who will send priorities and requierements in the video game or software you are developping. These requierements have to be ranked from the most pressent matter to the one that can be done last. This is called a Product Backlog. The one who is doing this job is the Product Owner. It is just a matter of setting your work. It is pretty much like if you had a pile of documentsat your office that your boss told you to do by the end of the day. We all know it can't be done in a day, so like I said you just start to prioritize the work.
The team comes together as one cross-functional team, there isn't suppose to be one department for programmers, one for 3D artist etc. It is pretty much like a project management organigram, everyone works in unison. The team on the product backlog. Also there is the Scrum Master who facilitates the entire process.
Now there is an issue of who is committed to this project and who is involved. Those commited are The product owner, the Scrum Master and the Team. They are commited because they are accountable for the success of this project. If the project falls through, it is their heads that will get chopped by the Executioner. Now you can guess that the Stakeholders are involved. To understand this concept there is the chicken and pig joke but it is pretty lame, so I won't bore you with the details. If you are really curious about this joke, just google Scrum chicken and pig.
I guess this is long enough for you guys to want to know more about it. So next blog it will be about the roles of every member of a Scrum Team.
Project Management Organization
Just a small example of what is a Product Backlog.
