Definition of Done is a pretty common concept in Agile. Very useful. For Minecraft features we actually split it into four doneness levels. Designed, Runnable, Snapshotable, and Releasable. Design is emergent so it happens in parallell. We track this per feature & platform.
We also use the concept MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) and MLF (Minimum Lovable Feature). MLP is minimal featureset that we think make the next major release lovable, something we could be proud of. MLF is the same but at feature level (= min scope to make the feature lovable)
For example the Piglin mob was part of MLP. And the bartering mechanic as part of the Piglin MLF. Baby piglins riding baby hoglins was outside MLF but made it in anyway.
To track this we use a huge visual board that we call the Dashboard. A big physical thing full of stickynotes, until covid came & we all went home and made everything digital). Every week we meet in front of the dashboard to followup, make decisions, tradeoffs, etc. Very useful!
I wrote this because I get a lot of agile folks asking me how we do release management with Minecraft, and this is the jist of it. Might make a more in-depth article later, if there is interest.
A critical part of the process is our snapshots. Every week we release a new snapshot, and community feedback from real players help us validate & invalidate our assumptions. We use that to adjust MLP and MLF and tweak the release plan as we go.
So all you folks out there playing on snapshots and giving feedback, you are effectively part of the extended design team, and you have more influence on the game then you might realize. Thanks for helping us make this game awesome!
You can follow @henrikkniberg.
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