Hi everyone! My name is Fredrik, and I’m the producer of ilomilo. As a producer, I’m responsible for the overall quality of the game, to keep track of the production schedule and to make sure everyone on the team is happy and have what they need to make a good game! Today, I would like to tell you a little about how the team works and how we decide what to do next in the project.
For the development of ilomilo, we use a project management method called “scrum”, which is quite common in the games and software industry. It basically means that instead of planning the entire project in detail from start, we work in iterations that we call “sprints”, and once we have completed a sprint, we plan the next and so on. This means that we can easily change direction in the middle of the project, without losing too much time.
Every morning, we have a scrum meeting with the entire team in our cozy scrum corner. As you can see on the picture above, everyone is really happy =). Each member of the team gets to tell the others what they have done since the last meeting, what they will do today and if they are having any problems. That way, everyone gets a daily update of what is going on in the project, and any problems can be quickly solved. The whole meeting usually takes around 10 minutes.
Computer software development in general and games development in particular are turbulent and changeable processes. Technical complexity combined with creativity means that you constantly need to create new technical inventions and design solutions. In fact, the only thing you can rely on is that things are going to change! That is why scrum is such a good method for game development.
Naturally, scrum does not magically solve everything. We still need to have a rough plan of the entire project, and a detailed design document. The important thing is to know that they are going to change. Planning ahead is important, planning to much is a waste of time.
That’s all for now!
