Kanban or Scrum for Game Development? Several boards?

[Claudio Medina]

Bear with me, I'm a game developer but this is my first time leading a development group. I'm trying to get things done right and I'm happy to have Atlassians services.
Jira+Confluence+Bitbucket have been a blessing and very easy for me to understand.
So far though, I'm having a hard time grasping some concepts of Agile.

We're an indie game development team. We don't have the pressure of client deadlines per se, but of course we're planning milestones and roughly scheduling goals.
We have small departments of 2/3 persons, mainly programming, art and marketing.
What Jira structure would you suggest me? I know this very subjective, but any ideas are appreciated. Should I create a project for each departmet? Or a board for each? or should they all share the same board? If different boards, should they all be Scrum? From my understanding Scrum is the preferred model for software development. But would that include the marketing side of the project, for instance?

Thank you very much :)

[rsperafico · Accepted solution]

Hi Claudio,

First of all I would like to thank you for your interest on using our tools to manage your activities and I would like to wish you success on your Indie Game.

As you have mentioned on your comment, your question on what is best would be very subjective. Due to that, I would first recommend you on reading more about about Scrum and Kanban. Give it a try by setting up diffent roadmaps where you will be able to meassure what will be best for you and your development team.

Based on your scenario, I would (particularly) adopt the Scrum method whereby, as you have mentioned, you don't have an external pressure but you do have milestones to be met on a interval basis.

Please refer to Scrum documentation for further information.

Please refer to Kanban documentation for further information.

Kind regards,
Rafael

[Claudio Medina]

Thank you, Rafael.
Will do :) Before accepting this as an answer, would you care expanding a little bit about the number of boards though? Do you think it could make sense to have a board for each department?

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you guys to make this services so affordable for small teams like us. Regards

[rsperafico]

Hi Claudio,

You could create different dashboard to different departments (e.g.: developers, designers and/or marketing). Alternatively, you could use a single dashboard and share it within different users.

Please, remember that you can create different filters to be added/displayed on the dashboard. Said that, you can ask to all users from an specific departments to add a particular filter to it.

You are able to manage users access by creating access level to different groups.

Please, do not hesitate on contacting us for further information.

Have a great weekend and happy Easter!

Kind regards,
Rafael