This session will describe our experience in using the Scrum process of Software Development to create complex tools for use in animated movie production. Our process evolved out of the need to keep the task of UI design at least one sprint ahead of software development. Our products are designed for the creative in-house artists who use the tools for long hours over the course of movie production. We will also share ways to capture the complexity in the artists workflow and methods to break it down into reusable components both for graphical user interfaces and for software development.

Agile methods are frequently associated with iterations, incremental development, and adding one thin slice of functionality at a time. We have mantras such as YAGNI and “The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work.” We promote refactoring. These concepts are, however, harder to apply to UI-intensive application code than faceless back end systems. In this tutorial, we will incorporate ideas from user-centered design, discussing how we approach user-facing agile application development at Reaktor through a mixture of presentations and hands-on exercise.