Powering Up CGI with Scrum Teams
Iaina Estrela
Check out this really informative blog by Iaina Estrela.
I have been working in the 3D animation industry for about 6 years and talking with my colleagues across the globe I see the same frustrations being repeated. All studios in the industry have to deal with constant organizational and communications problems that impact artists’ tight deadlines and exhausts the entire production.
When the pandemic started and we all had to work from home, my partner, who now had to share a table in our living room with me, had the opportunity to observe my daily struggles in my new job leading a 8 person team in a new animation studio. He told me I should really look into Scrum, that it could help me. After a bit of resistance I decided to look into it.
I watched a few dozen videos and read articles about Agile methodology and it’s frameworks, especially Scrum. I was convinced that this is what my project needed. I could clearly see the parallels between the management process and roles used in a production and how they would change and fit in the agile methodology, why the schedules are always failing and how this can be fixed.
Unfortunately I was still just an artist with no management experience and I could not change an entire studio, but with some production support I was able to facilitate the surface team routine. I started to introduce some of the Scrum concepts and events in the surfacing team adapted for the amount of interference we could do into the company established processes. Even not doing not following the Scrum framework to the letter, I could quickly see the improvement on the work quality and efficiency. In return every week the team would receive compliments for great deliveries and that motivated everyone.
That experience made me dive more into the Agile methodology and I am here to share some of my thoughts of how the CG environment can take advantage and improve with a change of mindset of how the work is made and delivered.
Most productions still use a waterfall framework to organize tasks: an idea has to go through each specialist that builds a small part of the asset gradually until it gets to the final product. In the traditional concept of workline each skilled worker has the abilities to do only one part of the task and deliver the product to the next person in line. That plan worked for a long time on processes that were simple and predictable.
That is not the case of the CG pipeline, the animation and vfx industry are getting everyday more complex, with streams that are getting longer, creating new tasks and specialists every couple years, and hiring people that do not only need knowledge on art but also physics, math, biology. The technology is constantly being updated, the competition between softwares and the development of new techniques push the artist to always need to learn more to do the same work.
The traditional waterfall pipeline does not consider the vast multidisciplinary knowledge 3d artists have, they are able to support a team in multiple areas, but instead they are put in a specialist box in a linear pipeline where tasks can not overlap and the collaborative work is restrained. Those factors make production realistically look more like a chaotic game of pointing fingers and task being redone.
A Waterfall framework does not support the multidisciplinary interdependence of the task, how one problem can be solved in multiple ways, making an individual spend hours trying to deal with a problem by himself when it could be solved in minutes with the input of the correct people. Processes defined by one department affect each other, rigging and animation, surfacing and lighting, animation and modeling, even stages far from each other like animation and script. More than often the process needs to go backwards for checks , fixes and adjustments.
Decisions on any stage of the pipeline have a considerable downstream effect. Not everyone takes its causes seriously since each person works individually and doesn’t see or understand the impacts. With such tangled constructions how can you expect a production to go in only one direction? A waterfall framework definitely does not have room for the complexity and uncertainty a CG production can generate.
I believe that the most important step a animation or movie studio nowadays is to accept the production volatility, embrace the fact that there will be changes in design and scripts, shots will be cut and new ones will be created halfway, that there will be programs updates, new technologies, tools and techniques that can interfere in the solutions for the projects. Those characteristics should be expected, and for being expected, work in a system that will support those constant changes.
The first Agile framework I had contact with was Scrum. Explaining the Scrum process in a nutshell:
A self-managed multidisciplinary development team chooses from a priority list (backlog) created by the product owner the tasks that can be accomplished in a predefined period of time (sprint). During that sprint they have daily catch ups (daily scrums) to share progress and communicate impediments until the end of the sprint when there is a review and retrospective of the work done. All that guided by a person that will make sure the processes are flowing accordingly (Scrum Master).
That dynamic has it’s key in the change of mindset of the role of each person in the process.
The production coordinator becomes a product owner with focus on the backlog, defining priorities and on delivering the best quality product. He doesn’t need to be worrying about managing people, his focus is on managing the priority list considering the teams inputs and suggestions constantly refining it making sure they have all the information to reach the results desired by the company and direction.
The artist becomes a member of a multidisciplinary team and has daily meetings to catch up about the progress of the tasks that belong to the team (not the individual). Owning the task and responsibilities as one team stimulates collaborations and exchange of knowledge, evolving the skills of the entire team and also disencourage pointing mistakes since the goal belongs to the group. They have autonomy to choose the tasks and how they are going to be complete, always respecting the product owner’s requirements.
The scrum master supports the team guiding them through their interactions and processes to create high valued products and removes impediments they might come across. An effective scrum master will protect the team, help the product owner’s job giving input for the backlog and also generate value to the company optimizing process, teaching scrum, and directing the team to be self-organized.
The specialists would be divided in teams depending of the type of product to be delivered:
Pre-production teams: script, storyboard, animatic and design delivers 2D content.
Production teams: layout, modeling, surfacing, rigging delivers 3D assets.
Post-production teams: animation, fx, lighting, rendering, compositing, editing delivers final shots.
There are two functions that sit on the bridge between processes: design that is a pre-production process but is also the foundation for the production team; and animation that works shot based but if influenced a lot by modeling and rigging. I question what would be the best distribution but at the end of the day I believe the decision should be made with input of the teams and depending on the final product. Maybe even test different teams compositions to find the most effective with the feedback of the teams themselves.
Those roles work around cycles (sprints) of a sequence of events:
Sprint Planning: when the team defines goals and what can be accomplished during the sprint.
Daily Scrum: daily quick catch up (no more than 15 min) to update the tasks developments and help the team to work collaboratively to solve routine problems.
Sprint Review: when it is evaluated what is complete and is drawn a plan for the next sprint.
Sprint Retrospective: review of the teams processes and human interactions. Evaluation of what can be improved for the next sprint.
Those events are important to develop a sustainable pace, maintain quality of deliveries and to make possible continuous improvements. When properly applied it also helps to have a better scope of the length of the project and to prospect even amount of work though the schedule avoiding overload and overtimes .
This framework also stimulates the team to share their knowledge between their colleagues, understand, support and respect each other’s roles creating a better work environment and professional growth.
I don’t think my concept is perfect, I actually believe Scrum would need to be mixed with other frameworks to attend to all the necessities of a CG team. This structure can be even more complex if we consider places with more departments like look development, texturing, grooming, simulation, etc, but I hope to have more solutions and techniques on how to better organize this with further studies.
I was very concise on my explanation of the Scrum events and how they work, if you would like to read more about in with more detail I recommend the article “Scrum in VFX” and you can see more about it from someone who successfully applied in their studio and I also recommend “How to apply the Scrum to a cartoon tv show production” to hear about scrum from a person who used it show struggling with delivers.
Lot’s of the issues I see today in the studios are generated by lack of communication, micro managing and individualist behavior in an outdated framework. Agile comes to promote inspection, transparency and adaptation changing people’s perspective about how a project has to be managed in a world of constant change. If the agile mindset gets to reach the CG industry it will have much to prosper.
Article by Iaina Estrela
Revision by Joanna Koprowicz
