Milestones & Planning¶
We use an Agile workflow adapted for game development: short sprints for day-to-day execution, wrapped by longer production milestones that track the overall shape of the game.
Why Agile for games¶
Game development has more unknowns than typical software work — fun isn't always predictable, and scope changes as prototypes prove out (or don't). Agile gives us short feedback loops so we catch a bad design direction in weeks, not months, while milestones keep the team aligned on the bigger picture the sprints are building toward.
Roles¶
- Producer — owns the roadmap and milestone plan, runs planning and review meetings, clears blockers.
- Discipline leads (design, engineering, art) — own their backlog, break down work into sprint-sized tasks, represent their discipline in planning.
- Team members — pick up tasks, keep their board status current, flag blockers as soon as they appear rather than at standup.
Sprints¶
- Length: 2 weeks.
- Sprint planning: first day of the sprint. Each discipline pulls tasks from its backlog into the sprint based on priority and capacity.
- Daily standup: 15 minutes, async-friendly. Each person shares what they did, what they're doing next, and any blockers.
- Sprint review: last day of the sprint. Play the build. Anything not actually playable/working doesn't count as done.
- Retro: immediately after review. What worked, what didn't, one or two concrete changes to try next sprint.
Backlog¶
- Tracked in the task tracker (see Team & Tools).
- Each item has: a clear one-line description, an owner's discipline, a size estimate, and a link to the relevant design doc or spec if one exists.
- Leads groom their backlog weekly — reprioritize, split anything too big for one sprint, close anything that's no longer relevant.
Definition of done¶
A task is done when it's:
- Implemented and merged (or placed and tested, for content tasks).
- Playable in the current build — not just "code complete."
- Free of known regressions in adjacent systems.
Anything that doesn't meet this bar stays in progress and rolls into the next sprint rather than being marked done.
Milestones¶
Sprints roll up into production milestones, which are the checkpoints we use to judge whether the game is on track:
| Milestone | Goal |
|---|---|
| Prototype | Core loop is fun in isolation, on paper mechanics, no real content |
| Vertical Slice | One full slice (art, audio, UI, gameplay) at target quality |
| Alpha | Feature complete — all systems exist, content still incomplete |
| Beta | Content complete — polish, balancing, and bug fixing only |
| Gold | Shippable build |
Each milestone has its own review: play the build against the milestone's goal, decide go/no-go on scope for the next phase, and adjust the roadmap if needed. See Build & Release for how milestone builds are cut.
Scope changes¶
Scope creep is the biggest risk to any milestone. If new work comes up mid-sprint:
- It goes into the backlog, not directly into the current sprint.
- The producer and relevant lead decide whether it's urgent enough to swap for something already committed — swapping in without swapping something out isn't allowed.