Scrum is one of the most widely adopted frameworks in game development, but there’s a catch: it only works well in small, cross-functional teams of 10 or fewer. Once you scale beyond that, as every AAA studio must, the cracks appear.

Meetings balloon. Communication slows. Teams lose focus. Predictability vanishes.

AAA studios need something more. That’s where Scrum@Scale comes in, but vanilla Scrum@Scale doesn’t fit the unique realities of game development. That’s why I created Game@Scale, an in-house adaptation that brings the discipline of Scrum into AAA without forcing every team into a framework that doesn’t match their work.

Why Classic Scrum Breaks in AAA

Scrum was built for small, cross-functional teams of 10 or fewer. Once you move beyond that, the framework starts to lose effectiveness. The reason is simple: communication doesn’t scale linearly, it scales exponentially. Every new member adds more connections to manage, and the larger the team gets, the harder it becomes to keep everyone aligned.

In AAA studios, where you’re coordinating hundreds of developers across multiple disciplines, classic Scrum simply can’t hold together. Sprint planning, reviews, and standups that work beautifully for 7–10 people quickly become unmanageable at 30, 50, or 100+. Without a scaling framework, Scrum collapses under its own weight.

This isn’t just a development challenge, it’s a Project Management challenge. Scaling Scrum is fundamentally about how work gets organized, tracked, and delivered across disciplines. That’s why role capacity and coordination matter just as much as team size.

Role Capacity in Scrum@Scale

Scrum@Scale introduces a structure where each team has a ScrumMaster and a Product Owner. But it’s important to understand that these roles have capacity limits, they can’t stretch infinitely across teams.

A ScrumMaster is responsible for keeping the team aligned, removing blockers, and protecting the process. With experience, a ScrumMaster may be able to support up to three teams effectively. At the entry level, though, most can realistically only handle one team at a time. Expecting more than that usually leads to burnout or neglected teams.

The same applies to the Product Owner role. A Product Owner can serve multiple teams, but there’s always a practical ceiling. The workload and context switching eventually dilute their ability to prioritize effectively and deliver value. When that happens, teams stall or pull in low-value work simply because they lack clear direction.

For game development, recognizing these role limits is critical. Programming, design, art, and QA each create unique demands, and scaling only works if you respect the capacity of the people guiding the process. That’s why any adaptation of Scrum@Scale for games needs to account for role bandwidth as much as team size.

What Scrum@Scale Promises

Scrum@Scale, created by Jeff Sutherland, is designed to extend Scrum beyond a single team. Instead of one Scrum team, you create a network of small Scrum teams, each with their own Product Owner and ScrumMaster, all coordinated through an “Executive MetaScrum” and “Executive Action Team.”

On paper, this solves the scaling problem: you keep teams small, but align them through structured coordination.

In practice, though? AAA game development is not the same as enterprise software. And this is where vanilla Scrum@Scale breaks down.

Why Vanilla Scrum@Scale Fails in Games

Games aren’t built by homogeneous engineering teams. They’re built by specialized disciplines with very different workflows:

• Programming & Design thrive in Scrum, with iterative delivery and fast feedback loops.

• Art/Asset pipelines often need a waterfall-style approach, concept, modeling, texturing, review, approval. Trying to force this into 2-week sprints just leads to rushed, low-priority work.

• QA, stabilization, and performance teams deal with highly interrupt-driven tasks, where Kanban works better than rigid sprints.

Scrum@Scale assumes every team runs Scrum. In AAA, that’s simply not realistic. And forcing it creates frustration, wasted time, and the kind of “Scrum theater” that developers love to hate.

Other Scaling Frameworks (And Why They Don’t Fit)

AAA studios have experimented with other scaling frameworks:

• LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum): lightweight, can work for AA or mid-sized teams, but struggles in AAA’s complexity.

• SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework): too corporate and heavyweight for creative pipelines.

• FAST (Fluid Agile Scaling Technology): looks good on paper, but in my experience collapses quickly under real production pressure.

The problem isn’t the frameworks themselves, it’s that none of them were designed with the realities of AAA game development in mind.

Introducing Game@Scale

This is why I created Game@Scale: an in-house adaptation of Scrum@Scale built specifically for AAA game studios.

The key difference? Each discipline uses the workflow that fits them best, while still aligning under one production framework.

• Programming: Scrum works best in small, focused teams of up to 9 developers plus 1 ScrumMaster.

• Game Design: Product Owners prioritize and translate player value into backlog items.

• Art/Asset pipelines: waterfall-style, with approvals and stage gates.

• QA/Stabilization/Performance: Kanban, to handle unpredictable and reactive work. It prioritizes issues by severity and keeps the focus on resolving problems quickly.

• Cross-team alignment: dependencies cleared between teams; milestone-level reviews showcase epics without wasting everyone’s time.

Game@Scale respects the reality that not every discipline in AAA can or should work in Scrum. But it keeps teams aligned so the whole studio moves toward the same production goals.

Benefits for AAA Studios

When applied correctly, Game@Scale helps AAA studios:

• Reduce wasted time from bloated, all-hands reviews.

• Preserve velocity by letting each discipline work in its natural rhythm.

• Increase predictability accurate forecasts even at scale.

• Improve morale by cutting “Scrum theater” and focusing on real delivery.

• Celebrate big wins at milestones instead of drowning in sprint-by-sprint noise.

In short: it brings back the agility and focus that gets lost when Scrum is stretched beyond its natural limits.

Related Reading

• Why Scrum in Game Development is harder than it looks

• How to prevent scope creep in AAA projects

• Why a vertical slice is the true starting point for scaled frameworks

• Understanding cargo cult practices in Agile

• The role of triple constraints in managing AAA production

Conclusion

Scrum@Scale offers a starting point, but AA and AAA game studios face unique challenges in scope, dependencies, and cross-team alignment. Game@Scale is my adapted approach for game development, designed to keep teams agile while still delivering the predictability and coordination large projects demand.

If your organization needs a more realistic way to scale Scrum across multiple teams, my Game Project Management Services can help you implement Game@Scale so you can reduce waste, clear bottlenecks, and ship with confidence.

FAQ

Isn’t Scrum just more meetings?
Not if it’s done right. In AAA, full-studio reviews only happen at milestones like vertical slice or beta. Sprint reviews stay within teams, keeping the process efficient.

Isn’t Scrum too time-consuming?
Done poorly, yes. Done well, Scrum only takes about 8–10% of a team’s time, a small investment for the clarity and alignment it provides.

How does Scrum scale in AAA game development?
Scrum works best with 10 or fewer people. Beyond that, communication complexity makes it break down. That’s where frameworks like Scrum@Scale come in. For games, I use Game@Scale, my in-house adaptation that accounts for programming, art, design, and QA workflows.

Can one ScrumMaster or Product Owner support multiple teams?
Yes, but with limits. A seasoned ScrumMaster may handle up to three teams; newer ScrumMasters usually manage just one. Product Owners can cover more than one team, but only up to the point where priorities and value delivery don’t suffer.

Is Scrum too rigid for creative work like art or narrative?
Scrum fits programming and design well, but art and narrative pipelines often work better in a waterfall-style flow. In those cases, hybrid models (Scrum for code/design, waterfall for art, Kanban for QA) give the best results.

What framework works best for QA and stabilization teams?
Kanban. QA, performance, and stabilization work is unpredictable and reactive. Kanban keeps focus on fixing the most critical issues first, without forcing them into a sprint.

Can Scrum work in AAA game development?
Yes, but only if adapted. AAA teams are too large for classic Scrum. Scaling frameworks like Scrum@Scale, or game-specific models like Game@Scale, are needed to keep teams aligned without drowning in overhead.