An overview of Scrum and XP and our experiences at High Moon Studio in applying these Agile methodologies to entire game development teams and projects. Agile Methodology is an approach to development that values empirical results over large plans. Typically games are developed in phases such as planning, coding, integrating, debugging and tuning/testing. We really don't know what the game is until the last phase when it's too late to change it considerably or to cancel it and save money.

Agile is about doing all these phases within small (2-4 week) iterations and seeing what the game that you are developing is. It creates small cross-functional teams that have ownership and promotes communication across the disciplines.