Assignment Submission

In the middle of week 12 was the the deadline for submission of the pitch presentation and documentation. This was the culmination of all work the team has put together in both the prototype and the pitch deck and presentation. However, the submission didn't go as smoothly as the team has planned.

The team had very carefully planned the final three weeks of the course to allow us to submit without stress and focus on preparing our Development Logs for the submission. However, the team had a significant misunderstanding on what needs to be submitted with our supervisor. Everybody from the team was with the impression that we needed to submit all the game prototype planning documentation, however, the assignment required us to submit a pitch planning document. This document had to summarise all decisions that went into the creation of the pitch deck. In order to address the uncertainty as quickly as possible, I jumped on a call with Jamie White, who helped me narrow down the most important points that have to be covered in the document. It was a valiant effort by the whole team to retrospectively complete the document and prepare it for submission in the span of 2 days. Additionally, I was on a holiday over the week, which meant I had to step away from my friend's birthday party in order to support the team and contribute to the document.

Unfortunately, our troubles didn't end there. Two days before the submission deadline, during our last session with our supervisor, we received some major feedback, highlighting improvements to our pitch video presentation and documentation. While the feedback is appreciated, it is highly untimely. The team didn't have the time to address a lot of the feedback and was forced to submit the presentation as-is. The feedback on our documents highlighted a gap we've left throughout the development of the prototype. This meant that once again the team had to jump all-hands-on-deck to address those feedback points.

Ultimately, the team managed to submit the assignment on time. Hopefully, the feedback we didn't have time to address has minor impact on our grades.

Retrospectives

Now that the team assignment is submitted, it is time for the team to reflect and prepare for the challenges ahead.

Team retrospective

For the final team retrospective, I selected the "Rose, Thorn, Bud" format (EasyRetro, 2021). The format is new to everybody in the team, hence, prompts more out-of-the-box thinking. The retrospective session was focused on the course as a whole and was executed asynchronously due to the lack of common availability.

To summarise the retrospective, I decided to cover a couple of the most important points in each category.

Roses

The general feeling of the team is that we are very happy with the idea and prototype we generated through the course. This was further solidified by the amazing feedback we received by our testers who confirmed the viability of the idea and highlighted how we can make it better. Additionally, despite the lack of common availability where the team could collaborate more, we communicated honestly and transparently. We never missed a chance to work together, help and learn from each other.

Thorns

The biggest thorn for the team has been lack of time. It has caused multiple ripples through our work such as not being able to create our own 3D assets as well as not being able to apply any of the feedback gathered from the user testing. In my opinion, the root cause for having so little time is the part time nature of the course. While we were all committed to the course our main priorities naturally remained elsewhere. Additionally, the lack of availability combined with losing a team member in the middle of the course meant that the team didn't manage to stick to the original roadmap. However, I think this issue isn't very severe in our current scenario where this is solely an assignment as the team managed to reprioritise the tasks and submit on time.

Buds

Ultimately, each team member is in a much better position as a Game Developer after the completion of this course. All of us have gained significant expertise with the Unity (Unity Technologies, 2021) game engine and the workflow around it. Additionally, the prototype is very close to being ready to be part of our portfolios. The team is keen to achieve this milestone before wrapping up the project.

Personal retrospective

This course has been a rollercoaster for me. As the team leader, I've spend significant time organising the team and ensuring tat everybody is aligned on what needs to be done. Additionally, I've spent significant amount of time supporting the team with Git and Unity skill share sessions and support. Every time I helped my team I focused on sharing the knowledge and explaining why an issue is there to enable my teammates to succeed independently in the future. This would be my biggest highlight from the course as while helping them I also improved my personal mentoring and coaching skills.

Due to these managerial activities, many times I had to go over the designated 20 hours in order to contribute to the prototype. However, I've learned a lot. Most notably, I learned how to use the Unity Shader Graph (Unity Technologies, 2021) to create new and interesting shaders and created my very first Teaser video which was extremely exciting and fun.

This project wouldn't have been a success if it wasn't for my team. Our honest and direct communication meant that once we were aligned on what we want the team could go away and work whenever our schedules allowed and report back with progress updates and the completed work.

The most difficult challenge has been keeping up with the development logs while managing the team and working on the prototype. While it has been easier than the reflective journal entries from the previous course, it still takes significant amount of time. The value I see in having a reflective journal or development logs can be achieved in much shorter time if the target audience is only myself, so I will be able to continue the practice that make sense for me without devoting such a massive amount of time for it.

Let's see what the next chapter in my journey entails.

References

EasyRetro, 2021. Improve your team with fun sprint retrospectives | EasyRetro former FunRetro. [online] EasyRetro former FunRetro. Available at: https://easyretro.io/templates/rose-bud-thorn/ [Accessed 23 August 2021].

Miro. 2021. Miro | Online Whiteboard for Virtual Collaboration. [online] Available at: https://miro.com [Accessed 23 August 2021].

Unity Technologies, 2021. Unity. Unity Technologies.

Unity Technologies, 2021. Unity Shader Graph | Build Your Shaders Visually with Unity | Unity. [online] Unity. Available at: https://unity.com/shader-graph [Accessed 23 August 2021].