5SD037 – Transparancy
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During the last two weeks our game production project has managed to proceed through the pre-production phase and entered the production phase. The pre-production phase has mostly been occupied by heavy design decisions along with the new experience of using scrum and its tools. My role as a producer for this project has brought me to be responsible for the backlog, goals, sprints and sprint reviews for this project. During the pre-production phase, I have been conducting meetings as well as creating the entire backlog with the help of my team. The template for the backlog was already decided, but the structure and content of the backlog still needed to be deployed. I started with the categories that was needed for the minimum viable product, also known as the Alpha. The categories were then separated into smaller subsections for each role that was present in the group. One column for coders/programmers, one for arts/graphics and one for sound. These categories contained content based items for each feature that we needed to implement for the Alpha. The backlog was then approved by the team and sent for approval by the project owner. The project owner was discontent with the backlog because he wanted it to include the entire vision for the game. Including all possible features that were thought of and reasonable for the final product/end game. After reading his comments I went back and revised the backlog a ton. I added several features to the game, including bosses, menus, GUI, and characters. I also added risks, steps, priorities and deadlines to the backlog to address the project owner’s concerns. I also decided to make it visually logical by implementing color codes for specific details that were crucial to the project. These colors regarded the deadlines and priorities. Having visual elements that provided an easier reading experience of the backlog was something that I thought the group would appreciate for its efficiency. The revised version of the backlog was then sent back to the project owner for approval. Gladly the new version passed with flying colors. The changes that I implemented gave the backlog more depth and detail, which was crucial for the project’s transparency. Scrum is a project model based on transparency, and if the project is not transparent and easy to understand of each member then it’s not following the basic principles of the agile and lean manifesto. That is why these revisions were so important to execute.
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