David Monteleone, Week 12 Journal PPJ, Blog post 8, Personal Postmortem

David Monteleone, Week 12 Journal PPJ, Blog post 8, Personal Postmortem

Communication, Team, Framework, Mini games, Motion base, Personal Postmortem, PPJ

Personal Postmortem

What went right?:

1)      Making a modular system to integrate plenty of mini games.

One of the main goals for the project was to create a system where games can be worked on in small teams and easily integrated into the entire mini game system. Through the use of modular scripting and not creating major dependencies, the team did this well. Moving forward, the team is now able to break out into small groups and create any type of motion mini game that you can dream. I saw this as an excellent breakthrough for the team and was happy to have been a part of it.

2)      Cooperation within the team.

Although the team suffered from a lack of solid communication, the group did get along as a whole. There were never any personal conflicts between individuals that cost us time. I’ve been in far too many groups where individuals end up hating each other by the end of the term. As of now, if the group moved onto next quarter, we have a solid relationship between everyone. I see this as being an excellent asset as friends work together better than enemies. We are definitely a team and work to motivate each other to do their best! As a leader in the group I worked to keep individuals motivated to do their work and wanted the best work from them.

3)      Recovering from a rough start.

I’ll be the first to admit that the team started out pretty rough. We we’re very confused and disorganized. The mini game concept lends itself to getting lost in many different ideas. However, around week 6 after having a serious group meeting, about getting our act together, the team recovered from its rough start and turned our Alien Arcade idea into a reality. Production ramped up, assets got finished, scripts were cleaned up, and real work was being done. I’m proud to have been working on a team that was able to fix so many problems and finish so strong. I’m not sure if my leadership was a part of the recovery, but I tried my best to help the group get out of this hole. I put many more hours than I needed into the game to bring it back up to speed.

What went wrong?:

1)      Communication between teammates.

From my perspective, the group suffered from individuals not keeping an eye on Slack. It also took a couple weeks to get the entire group onto Slack. People simply did not accept the invites to join the group even though they were sent when the group first started. Throughout the term there were situations were individuals would go quiet on Slack and not report where they were at on their tasks for the week. This resulted in myself having to pick up other peoples’ tasks. Sometimes people would do the same work and not realize two people had finished it. This is clearly unacceptable and the team will work to make sure that all individuals are accountable for communicating to the team next term. The leader of the group next term will assure that all teammates are in constant communication with the group.

2)      Version Control

From my view, the group struggled to use Perforce throughout the majority of the term. By the end of it everyone understood how to use it. Individuals were pushing changes that lacked .meta files. Teammates were working on the same files at once, which resulted in painful merge conflicts. The group spent more time than we should making sure that Perforce was taking our changes that we made to the game. For myself, after working through my work for the week it would sometimes take me an hour to properly get my changes into Perforce. The group eventually ironed out these issues, but it did keep our production slow in the beginning. In the next term a Perforce meeting will be held to iron out any issues that teammates having with using Perforce.

3)      Lack of a task assignment and management system.

The group used no task assignment and management system throughout the term. Tasks were assigned on a weekly basis and the team used the status report Excel file to figure out weekly tasks. There was a master task list in the Google Drive, but this was not updated regularly. This resulted in teammates not knowing when certain tasks had to be completed and the general timeline of the production was not set anywhere. I think this is one of our biggest crippling factors. I was very unhappy with the lack of organization we had this term. Moving into next term, the group will utilize Trello to fix this issue as it plagued us throughout the term.

Moving forward and how do we fix these issues for future projects?:

I know that the team will fix these issues in the next term. A clear leader will be assigned to the group through a voting process. Sometimes leadership roles were swapped throughout the term and there needs to be a clear leader to look to. The leader will be responsible for assigning tasks through Trello and making sure that all individuals are working on their assigned tasks for the week. There will be no lack of communication between group mates and the entire group will assure that. Before production ramps up in the next term, there will be a Perforce meeting to make sure that everyone working on the game understands how to use Perforce quickly and correctly. The group as a whole will be stronger and better. The issues that plagued us in the Fall quarter will not carry over to the Winter quarter. I will make sure of that.

Lessons learned for future projects?:

My personal lessons learned from this term are:

-          Modular systems are great!

-          Team cooperation is key!

-          Don’t have slow starts.

-          Make sure all teammates communicate.

-          Use version control to work for you, not against.

-          Use a task and management system!

Tags: Communication, Team, Framework, Mini games, Motion base, Personal Postmortem, PPJ