Game Design journal 3
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Mikael Ferroukhi Date: 22/02/18 5SD064 During the last few weeks, since the beginning of the production of our game Omibozu, me and my team really have tried our best to use the Scrum methodology. It was of course something new to us, and it definitely forced us to change the way we approached the work we had to do. It wasn’t a simple think to set up: during the first few weeks, I feel like it has been a bit rough to really understand the work method as it was essentially “forced” upon us. I sometimes felt that the amount “group work” and information to share was too important and that it was actually damaging my productivity as I personally prefer to work by my own. It was therefore necessary for our team to have a talk about it and to clearly define from the beginning how we were going to set up our group work, daily stand-up, meetings, etc.. On this part I have to say that we have been pretty good, we decided upon having to meet every single schooldays at 15:45, time that we agreed upon as it was the latest moment at which any member of the team had to leave class everyday. This way each member of the team could exchange everyday about: -What he had done since the last daily stand-up meeting? -What he was going to work on before the next one? -What has been a problem for him, that slows him down or even stops him from being able to work properly? -How can we help him? This way, we always knew how it was going for the rest of the team and in a sense it frees our mind from having to bother about not knowing if someone is not following the pace or worse, doesn’t dare to express that he has a problem and needs help. I think that before promoting a better workflow and to guarantee a level of efficiency, the Scrum methodology creates an atmosphere of trust that pushes me and my team members to produce the best of ourselves every week, which allows us to validate what had been agreed upon to be done during the sprint planning.
Now the sprint planning was also new to me, but I learned while we brainstormed on it with the team that it was a powerful tool: we agree on what will be done by each team member during the next week, try to determine how long each task will take, check if it is under the 20 hours minimum work time, and from there everybody knows what he has to do and there is no excuse for forgetting about something or anything else. What had be agreed upon will be produced and if there is a problem while doing it, the team will try to solve it after it has been brought up during the daily stand-up meeting. To sum it up, using the Scrum methodology has clearly made a positive impact on how the work is distributed, done in time, and shared with the other team members. This allows to work more efficiently and produce a better game before the deadline that has been given, just like in the industry.
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