How applicable is ISO/IEC 29110 in Game Software Development?

Jussi Kasurinen, Risto Laine and Kari Smolander have released an article on the application of ISO/IEC 29110 in the game development context. This research publication was part of the Lappeenranta University of Technology’s Game Research Interest Group research project SOCES, in which the differences and process similarities between software developers and game developers were examined.

Abstract from the paper: Software development in a small development team is a challenge, as people have to fulfill several roles, which in larger groups would have separate, dedicated people for the work. To help small development teams to organize their activities, ISO/IEC standardization body has developed a draft for the standard ISO/IEC 29110, Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities. Our study focuses on the application of this model in the game industry, an industry that develops software. However, the game industry has its own set of unusual features in software development, such as the demand for artistic vision, need for novelty and demand for creative designs. In this study we analyze how the standard would work in seven different game industry companies and identify a set of additions that would help these organizations to apply the standard in practice. Based on our results, the ISO/IEC 29110 should incorporate more support for iterative development to allow easier adaptation to real-life organizations.

A model for start-ups and small teams

ISO/IEC has prepared a set of standards for very small entities (VSE). This set is intended for small companies, departments and projects with typically less than 25 people. The 29110 standard describes various process models for systems and software development in different stages of an entity, which makes it applicable to many companies. A recent
application of the model is for highly iterative software development. The processes can be assessed to verify improvements and some countries also certify companies using the standard.

This international model is already very popular in especially South America. Other advanced countries include Canada, Thailand, Japan, Belgium, Czech Republic and Ireland. We believe that the model could be useful to many development teams also in Finland. The standard is partly freely available and there is a lot of supporting material for its
use.

To promote 29110, FiSMA plans to give a two day introduction course in the beginning of 2015. The participants will get insight to the standard and guidance for its deployment.

Further information: timo.varkoi@fisma.fi

ISO/IEC 29110 for Games

Lappeenranta University of Technology has been researching games from the viewpoint of software engineering in a multi-year spanning project which has had 11 company partners from the industry. As a part of the project, work has began on adapting the software process model principles of the ISO/IEC 29110 Very Small Enterprise Life Cycle model to the game companies.

The resulting deployment package ”High Iteration Software Process Model” aims to combine the late change requests, challenges of the creative aspects and other peculiarities of the game development world with the process thinking of software engineering. The work is currently in draft, and will be publicly available later this year.

During the development, most up-to-date information can be asked via email from Jussi Kasurinen (D.Sc.) at address jussi.kasurinen@lut.fi. Dr. Kasurinen is the manager of the research projects involved, and the main author of the deployment pack itself.