David T. Hyland

Post Mortem

​

Working with the team on Looters of the Arcane has its moments where you experience the work as a project manager. However, that didn’t help since I don’t have enough expertise to convince a small group to change their work around for the sake of documentation. During my time while I was still working on my Bachelor’s Degree in Game Design, I had been assigned on at least two production teams as one of their designers for their game. Those projects were also using the SCRUM methodology to assign tasks and keep track of everyone’s progress. I should’ve already grasped the basic knowledge of how to manage and run a production as an assistant to the team lead, but the situation with the current team didn’t let me put my skills into practice. On top of all the readings that I’ve put into my time schedule, I tried the best of what I could do to help the team complete their tasks before the end of this milestone.

 

Honestly, the entire production was a success in terms of being proactive on assignments, even without my help. Each team member was responsible for filling out their quota before the week ended. Everyone made a pitch effort in creating their latest builds and helped correct each other’s mistakes. I understand that they were a small group and that their work environment was a bit laxed, but they still managed to get results. I liked the fact that everyone was accountable for their work and tracked their objectives easily. I’ve seen a lot of progress since joining their team. They handled their tasks quickly and efficiently like all works should be. If I had to comment on their behavior, they set an exemplary of professionalism in their work and I believe that’s how production planning should be.

 

I suppose communications is what threw me off when working with the team. I did have the available resources to chat with my group on the team’s Discord site, but I was instructed by the team lead not to pester his team too much since I might impede on their work progress. Dealing with a small group is one thing, especially when they have to do some big tasks for their sprint progress; that doesn’t excuse them from reaching out for help. The fault also lies with me for not communicating my intentions towards the team. When I first came on to work for Evil Bear Gaming, I gave both my lead and the teams the impression that I was just another baggage for them to train while they we’re operating on a small team that knew their tasks. I didn’t want them thinking of me that way, so I tried to reach out to them by myself. The results didn’t turn out well as I had predicted since the team is already trying to knock out their work without going through the research or hassle.

 

One of the other issues I had trouble dealing with was the lack of working hours being logged in to Axosoft. I was told by the team lead that they don’t log their work in until end of the weekend. While this doesn’t affect their work a whole lot, I would like to get an accurate report on their progress towards their production. I was marked on Axosoft for observation status, so I could only review their work hours and see where they are with their tasks. While I’ve been investigating the reason for the lack of response towards logging in their work hours, I found out that some of the team members are still new to the software program and don’t know how to correctly log in their work. Fortunately, the team leader was there to help those individuals with the issue, so I couldn’t really do much to help other than notify them. I wished that I could take charge of their Axosoft and improve the quality of their sprint planner, but the lead handled it well. Overall, I think they did well in organizing the Axosoft the best they could before the end of their sprint.

 

Then there was the Social Media that I struggled with. My team lead wanted me to research ways to attract more people to their game, improve traffic to their company’s website and Social Media, then increase the download percentage of people who find their game. While I was tasked doing this, I looked into their current social media and only found it a bit lacking towards getting the public’s attention. From what I’ve learned about Public Relations, the developers or marketing teams would usually post discussions or weekly updates on where the game is at through their sprint activities. Also, there was the lack of accounts through the other social media websites. I gave the team lead the advice on using his team mates to take screenshots of their work and post it anywhere on the social web (YouTube being the best option). However, it wasn’t convincing enough for the team to act on the method since most of them had already abandoned some of their accounts. I’m not sure about how far they can go with spreading their information without posting their work on the web. I think a good way to get noticed really quick is if they start posting their work often instead.

 

To conclude my retrospective report, I felt that there was a lot to learn from both the class and the production experience. I may have lucked out when being assigned to a small team that didn’t let the work pressure them as much, but there was a sort of disconnect when dealing with the group’s organizational methods. Furthermore, I would like to take this lesson to heart and improve my actions as project manager the next time I’m set up with an agile team. I do have some regrets about what I couldn’t change, but I feel a bit satisfied with how well the team had expedited their work on time.