Do you keep missing sprint deadlines? It happens a lot in game development and you might have given up trying to fix it, but I’m here to offer a very large number of ways to finish your sprints. In this video, we’ll look at all of the many reasons why your team is failing to hit sprints and give practical tips and steps you can take to fix the problem.

We’ll start with considering new tasks appearing in the middle of the sprint. Then we move onto tasks taking longer than expected due to pipelines, unclear “done” definitions, new task types, and missing information. Next we deep dive into thorny team and team member issues. This covers team size, more pipeline issues, denial and wishful thinking, team apathy, work preferences, and an individual having issues. Finally we talk about project management issues. This covers buffers, time predictions, unrealistic milestone goals, bad sprint planning, decision making problems, and upper management issues.

Throughout it all I’ll be teaching you how to be curious, compassionate, and persistent to get to the bottom of this mystery of what’s going on for your game dev team. This is a long, but essential video to watch if you’re struggling with effective sprints that motivate the team and get everything done.

Additional Resources:
How to set up degree of done: [video](https://youtu.be/WYZfhSn2NyE) or [blog post](https://jennsand.com/advice/degree-done/) or [audio](https://soundcloud.com/jennsand/degree-done)
How to have productive meetings: [video](https://youtu.be/DimLiWDVv5Y) or [blog post](https://jennsand.com/advice/productive-meetings/) or [audio](https://soundcloud.com/jennsand/how-to-have-productive-meetings)
How to deal with an indecisive creative director: [video](https://youtu.be/eIEbbQ-yrdo) or [blog post](https://jennsand.com/advice/indecisive-creative/) or [audio](https://soundcloud.com/jennsand/indecisive-creative)
Risk Register: [example in Notion](https://www.notion.so/174a82440e1680a9abc8fbc92d4415ad?pvs=21)

Have a question for an expert game producer? Ask me your question here: https://jennsand.com/askjenn/
Text version: https://jennsand.com/advice/missing-sprints/
Video version: https://youtu.be/uDI_2QT69Oo

Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice: How to Get Your Team to Consistently Finish Sprint Tasks

00:00 Intro
00:52 Question and first thoughts
03:12 New tasks appear
06:33 Tasks take longer than expected
10:32 Team or team member issues — introduction
10:50 Team or team member issues — team size unsuitable
11:14 Team or team member issues — pipeline related bottlenecks & uncertainty who it goes to next
12:12 Team or team member issues — denial or wishful thinking
13:04 Team or team member issues — team apathy & what is the big deal about missing deadlines
14:07 Team or team member issues — team doesn’t like each other
14:39 Team or team member issues — work cadence and work preferences
15:41 Team or team member issues — individual’s personal issues
16:27 Project management issues — introduction
16:37 Project management issues — time prediction issues
18:17 Project management issues — buffers with time prediction issues
18:48 Project management issues — unrealistic milestone goals
19:24 Project management issues — bad sprint planning
20:52 Project management issues — decision making issues
21:35 Project management issues — upper management and creative director issues
21:58 Are you in production?
22:45 How to get the team on board to support fixing the problems
23:43 Wrap up

Jenn’s Generally Good Game Production Advice is an advice column for our modern ages and for game developers everywhere. Topics covered will help you ship your game on time, on budget, with a happy team no matter whether you are a producer or someone else on the game team. Find out more about how to hire me: [jennsand.com](https://jennsand.com/)

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