It's often said that computer science is a relatively young industry, and that its short age is the main reason behind the lack of documentation on how to properly manage software projects compared to other science related projects. If we follow that logic, we inevitably realize that it's even worse for game development, since this industry's projects can become very complicated and can't be managed like common applications. Fortunately, agile methodologies have become more widespread thanks to the benefits they can provide to the game industry. In this small post, I'll share a brief explanation of said perks.
The chaotic nature of game development
It's common knowledge that the gaming industry is in constant change, and this means that trends, goals, and standards are also very volatile, too. While for the end customers it means that companies will keep innovating and releasing unimaginable products in the future, for us developers that's synonymous with requirements that are constantly changing to meet the industry's standards. For this reason, thanks to Scrum's agile philosophy, the project can quickly adapt to new requirements whose implementation can be evaluated fast enough to avoid drowning the development in documentation.
Connected teams are better teams
This point may not be as important for app and web development as it is for game development. Since one of Scrum's most vital points is the daily reviews of the project's current state, this methodology allows the different members of a team to interact with each other frequently. Of course, this is good for the development projects of other products but, since game development teams are often made by people of different roles, like artists, programmers, sound technicians, and designers, communication between them is even more crucial. Thanks to Scrum, the different teams can communicate more clearly, which will most certainly increase the final product's quality.
Better task planning
Those projects that follow Scrum's guidelines must plan their activities in sprints which last for around a few weeks, instead of breaking the project in large blocks of tasks that follow the structure Plan -> Develop -> Test -> Launch game. Since sprints focus more on smaller tasks whose state is frequently reviewed in team meetings, developers can focus in a few objectives for a time and commit to meet the deadline, instead of having to fulfill a large list of requirements in some months with little reviewing from those who decided the tasks.
What if something doesn't work?
In the first point of this list, I talked about how important it is that projects are able to adapt to the fast paced changes in the gaming industry. However, being able to evaluate what went wrong in a sprint whose requirements weren't met, or to understand what could be not working in a project could be considered to be even more crucial, since these are obstacles that developers meet very often during the whole project. For this reason, using a methodology that prioritizes being able to adapt to the circumstances and correcting mistakes is very beneficial if we want to improve the team's efficiency.
Conclusion
To sum up, if developers want to complete projects in an industry that is as chaotic and complex as the gaming industry, they must organize the way they work so that they can do their job efficiently. Scrum provides many perks that can greatly improve the end product's quality so, even if a company is more used to utilize waterfall methodologies, its project management team should study Scrum and see if adopting it as a new methodology is both feasible and profitable.