Time Scheduling in Game Development: Agile and Waterfall Development

The purpose of software engineering is to control complexity, not create it.

— Pamela Zave, computer scientist that created the standard model for requirements engineering.

Product development in games are typically split into three large areas: technology, visuals, and design, each with differences in time management.

As a software engineer in games, understanding these differences will help you estimate team work load and manage the product timeline more accurately, thus improving overall efficiency.

Due to the relatively short development cycle of technology and design, it is biased towards agile development.

However for visuals, the process of rendering and animation takes a relatively long time and cannot be interrupted, so it is usually arranged in two stages, design (a.k.a. pre-production) and production. Agile development is possible during visual design, but for visual production waterfall development typically takes over.

A notable exception is UI/UX visuals development, which has none of these issues, so it will not use waterfall development.

When all of these come together, a mixed, interleaving development mode is used. For example, if one would be developing a game that already has similar products in the market, at the start the design team would be creating a design document, the development team would be setting up internal and external tools, while the visuals team would be creating an visual design guide, before launching into product iteration with placeholders until visual assets are complete, which is then assembled into the final product. If the technology development team is not aware of how the other teams work, it will cause idle time to popup during development, reducing efficiency.

In software companies outside of games, there are similar processes, but since the requirements for visuals and design are typically not as strict, and the amount of time and human resources used in design and visuals development are relatively less compared to technology and business development, so overall it would seem like either agile or waterfall development.

I try to update weekly. Next article will be about the Kanban system, target-oriented game development, automating project management, surfacing achievements and building confidence.