Mastering big projects with Scrum

Whenever you're working on a big project with a group, you need some kind of plan to follow along. Wether you are working on an extensive homework, a garden project or as in our case a game, starting off without any plan will lead to nothing.

This is where Scrum comes into place. Scrum is an agile way of managing work and is widely used in software development and the games industry. The idea behind Scrum is that everybody knows what they're doing, what others are doing and what has to be improved. Scrum also puts a big emphasis on constant feedback.

Using Scrum comes with a Scrum Document, in which you take down Sprint Goals, a Product Backlog, Sprint Planning and Sprint Reviews.

My work in the "Sprint Planning" section of the scrum document

The Sprint Goals define what needs to be achieved each week. This section does not only include milestones like Alpha, Beta and Release of a project, but also user stories for each sprint (usually "sprint" defines a week of work). User stories describe what the user experiences, when he uses the product after the sprint is done.

In the Product Backlog, all the elements of the product are taken down before working on the project in as much detail as possible. Additionally, you write down who is responsible for that specific element, when it should be done and what the risks for being unsuccessful in completing your tasks are. This ensures that each member of the team knows, what has to be done at a certain point of time as well as what is left to be done. Often things in the Product Backlog get scrapped, or additional features get planned, that will be taken down during the development process as well.

At the Beginning of each sprint, the team members meet up to plan what will be done during the week. These tasks get taken down in the Sprint Planning section in the Scrum Document alongside with the responsible person, the estimated work hours and a responsible person for quality assurance.

When the sprint ends, team members meet up again to discuss what they have been working on, how long it took and if they achieve to fulfill the requirements of the current sprint goal or if they arre behind schedule. This assures, that everyone is on track, people do not take too less or too little time to work on their tasks and elements meet the expectations of other team members. It is also an opportunity to give valuable feedback, ask questios or discuss occurring problems.

All in all Scrum is an incredibly useful tool and boosted the productivity of our team by an exponential amount. Especially the feedback loops and the possibility of keeping track of the work you have been done and that lies ahead of you gives a great overview and helps you out a lot when working on your project!