DD 10 Improving processes
A new crew member reports for duty!
Hi, I'm Ksawery and I've joined the team as a producer. Time for a quick rundown on the project!
DEVELOPMENT
- We are finishing creating scenes for the trailer. It will include both cinematic and gameplay footage. Soon we'll enter the post-production phase of editing and sound mixing.
BUSINESS
- Thanks to Digital Dragons Incubator we had a chance to present Black Resin on Demo Day. As a result, we are now discussing potential cooperation with several new publishers and one investor. Keep your fingers crossed!
PROCESSES
- Since team members have daytime jobs, we introduced fixed weekly schedules. Now we know who can spend how many evenings on the project per week. This way we get a healthy routine, it's easier to plan sprints and avoid burnouts.
- Next week starts the experiment of "quiet days". The idea is simple: every team member gets one day of work when no one else can interrupt him with questions or calls. The goal is to create a better environment for creative focus by minimizing context switching.
- We started individually gathering data on how much time we think we need to complete tasks. After finishing the sprint we share how many hours we actually needed to finish our work. Based on that data it will be easier to see if individual team members have a tendency to over or under-estimate their capacity. That will lead to better sprint planning.
- Our current PM tool is Trello. Until now it served us really well, but it might change soon. After completing the trailer we are getting back to working on the vertical slice and upcoming tasks' complexity will only increase with time. That's why we started discussing switching to Jira. The jury is still out on that.
Comments
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I have been away for a while. I'm now back to catch up.
I would like to give this Ksawery credit, on having made it onto the team and for his ideas. The idea of a dedicated "quiet day" per team member is an especially good touch, I think.
By PM, do you mean "private messages"? In the moments I have being able to revisit and possibly one day outright re-immerse with Black Resin, my own interest in communicating with the team stays intact. I refuse to touch Discord or Twitter, so I am interested in anything of that note. Granted I have no Idea what this "Trello" is.
I intend to hope that you're still open to direct e-mails, as I've sent, and in great fortune we have sometimes even traded, before.
Trello is a kind of a community/team board so you can collaborate on stuff and move things to different areas to signify you've completed it or are still working on it. (Also, you can open up the areas/tasks and see them in greater detail).
Also, I'm glad that you are back! You seem to be the best commenter I know of on itch and it is always great to see your really well communicated perspective on games! I haven't been on itch a while either so I guess I may be in the same boat.
Also x2, I'll really have to check this game out now; seems to have a lot of love and hard work dedicated to it.
Glad you're back!
PM in this context is "Project Management" it also very often is used relating to person as "Project Manager".