Research: Management structures

During a lecture based around management structure I learned about something called LEAN development and how to use it to create my MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to allow public feedback and useful iteration. What I will research is the differences between LEAN and AGILE management and which one I want to use throughout my University projects. I will use my existing knowledge to compare and contrast the two different types of management while showing what I have already used for my current project.

Throughout college and University I was introduced to SCRUM management, a cycle in which you relay information about tasks completed, not completed and ready to do are relayed to the team on a daily/weekly basis both in person and using something called a SPRINT sheet. A SPRINT sheet is a document where you document exactly what you are doing, have done and will be doing while using SMART targets to describe everything. A template of what this looks like is below.

Alongside this I create a spreadsheet document called a Gantt chart that allowed me to follow my progress of the sprint sheets on a weekly basis, currently I have created a Gantt chart for this project as it came in handy when expanding the chart from a weekly thing to a daily thing, allowing me to tick off what I have finished and easily see what I need to do.

LEAN development is a management structure in which you build and release as fast as possibly to get something out to the public, get feedback and then change the game depending on the feedback, this process is repeated until the product is deemed worthy by you or most likely the public. This allows you to create a Game (Minimum Viable Product) easily with little funding. It also allows you to create a game to your constraints, which means based around your own skills, you must constantly ask questions like ‘Do we need this?’ and ‘What can I strip it down to?’ to ensure you’re getting the absolute necessities for your game and nothing more, after all it’s all about making your game coherent.

The difference between LEAN and AGILE is that LEAN allows you to iterate with feedback fast, while with AGILE nobody will see the game until testing phase, so if something isn’t right with the game, it’s unknown for a long process of development, so generally LEAN saves a lot of time, but for single play-through story games such as limbo it wouldn’t be a great structure to use. This is because people aren’t going to replay a game that isn’t made for replay value.

With my current project it wouldn’t be possible to use LEAN development completely due to the narrative nature of the product, but I could still implement it by doing closed testing to ensure it doesn’t reach the public. If i did this often I could still save a lot of time and increase the desire of my product. Throughout University I feel like both styles will come in handy for different projects, so I will keep an open mind when deciding on how to manage my projects.