Does anyone know what software engineering process SOE uses to develop and maintain PS2? Is it agile or waterfall (in the beginning) just wondering?
People are still using waterfall? I'm not positive but I think SOE uses agile. Problem is they can't properly test features before they push them out the door because a lot of things work fine until you deploy them to live where thousands of players start hammering on it.
Looks like they are doing the thing pretty much every other horrible corp does: pretend to use Agile at the development level while consistently making concessions to an aging senior management that cannot grasp the concepts. EDIT: I mean they showed us a years-long roadmap so no they are not "Agile" just because they might be slapping on the bumper sticker.
Given that this is a AAA budget MMO, they most likely developed the engine in 3 months using 600 interns, a few whips, and a set of chains each. Since release, they have been working off the technical debt of a rushed engine with a skeleton crew of skilled, but highly overworked developers attempting to triage an inherently unstable system.
Huh? There's nothing wrong with having a roadmap planned out, in fact the further out you plan the better because it lets you prioritize things and group like features together into sprints. It's "agile" because you always end a sprint with a working product so you can change gears and do something totally different if you need to. During a sprint you're committed to the plan you made for that sprint, which is usually around 3 weeks in length. And aside from bug fixes it seems like that's what they're doing. Probably that's why the weekly patching they tried a while back was such a disaster. One week sprints in a project of this size isn't nearly enough time to get a working product with new features together. I think the problem they're having is just a simple case of not enough programmers. Maybe they pulled too many off onto other projects, I don't know. Judging by the constant bug regression and sheer number of things that break with each patch I'm guessing the coders have been short staffed for too long, which leads to hacks and band aid fixes to get things done in time which leads to an unstable code base. They could probably use a good 3 months of refactoring and cleaning, but good luck convincing management of that.
It's gotta be agile but it's not driven properly. Agile principles are as follows - I've marked "pass" and "fail" or "unknown" for Ps2, based on what I have observed over the last two years... Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software FAIL Welcome changing requirements, even late in development PASS Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months) FAIL Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers UNKNOWN Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted UNKNOWN Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location) UNKNOWN Working software is the principal measure of progress FAIL Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace FAIL Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design FAIL Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential FAIL Self-organizing teams UNKNOWN Regular adaptation to changing circumstances FAIL
