Mana Punch: Second Personal Review

Between the last time, I wrote one of these back in September I have no doubt there has been an improvement on my part as well as areas that I still need to work on. Starting with my interactions with the team, there have defiantly been major improvements over the past few weeks that brought us together and highlighted our individual needs. The guys and I have been to Hell and back over the last two months and have grown closer as both a team and friends. It was near the end of the semester that we began taking group breaks to just do something like play Minecraft that helped not only take the edge off the workweek but also strengthen connections between people. And it is thanks to that we grew more comfortable to share information with each other, it became easier to know when someone was on the edge of their rope or when something was up in their lives draining time and energy away from them. However, knowing how to respond once I have that information is still an area that needs work. It's great that I and the other have this bond now that we are more comfortable sharing our concerns and problems with each other, but what do we do in response. If someone comes to me and says they may have COVID and have been put in lockdown to be observed, what do I do with that. What aid can I possibly offer, how do we change up the workload to accommodate this absence? Near the end, we have this idea of basically giving everyone a sick day buddy who would take over if someone was indisposed or stuck. However, we did not have enough time to implement those ideas, and overall, I wish I pushed those Minecraft days early on.

That’s not to say nothing was done to create a healthy team environment between September and now. As I said, those Minecraft days helped pull us all together and help blow off some steam, I just wish we did more of them earlier in the semester. Aside from that, I kept up the open mind, open ear mentality I walked into the semester with. Which ended up helping out as people did have concerns about the project but did not want to air them to the whole team. So they brought these concerns to me for help and I ended up acting as a sort of therapist for their problems. Nothing that would directly impact the project, but that concerned a team member nonetheless and needed time to air. Things like, where the project would go after presentations, what are we going to go through and how do I plan for a second semester I don’t fully know what’s happening in it. To which I listened and gave the best answers I could give, mainly reassuring them that things would be fine either way and letting them air their concerns without any judgment or immediate fixes. It was just space for them to rant and get things off their chest first and foremost then get answers to anything they have problems with.

What helped with that were the overall improvements to both face-to-face and digital communications. While I still prefer in-person meetings and communication, however, I am adapting to the circumstances as best as possible picking up tactics such as: switching large debates to Voice chat rather than text, responding immediately to direct messages, and keeping up to date with the chat even if I did not get involved in the conversation. These have helped me over the past month is not only staying on top of the conversation but also getting the best response out of team members. These systems have also contributed to my ability to organize and work by myself. As with the understanding of what the team is doing / needs, I can adjust what I am working on to better meet team needs. Through this, I have delivered on my work each week making do with the commitments I made to the team.

Now, with the amount of growth over the past few months, a few things have stayed the same. The first being my understanding of Scrum, as rather than finding a new understanding or angle to take these lessons in, I came to better appreciate the complexities of the system. The importance of standups, how in-depth reviews should be, properly spacing meetings, etc. Along with the understanding that I am still a trusted member of the team. Sense members are still comfortable coming to me with issues and talking through them.

As for the goals that I laid out in my last reflection, there has been progressing with each but with progress comes new problems that need addressing. To start, becoming a better presenter got off to a good start, I felt as the project went on and I grew more comfortable with the topic I was better equipped to keep the flow going and rattle between points rather easily. However, now that I have that down the new problem comes with pre-planning. As if I want to make a presentation grabbing then it needs something besides me pulling people along. It needs art, it needs diagrams, it needs more complex animations and backgrounds, all of which require additional support and time from either myself or the other members of the team. If possible moving forward, I would like to avoid that our last presentation turned into, a rather lackluster affair that needed more forethought, planning, and follow-through to be better.

Things that would also require more assertion on my part. While I do believe a few more layers have been shaved down off that problem, it's still not at the root. I’m far better at controlling a meeting, ensuring nothing gets out of control, and reminding talkative members of the time and the other members present. However again, with that out of the way a new problem has cropped up on my radar, that being the inability to ask for something. As I said, things like the presentation or other features of the game need more attention and so I have to bring that up. The only problem is that since I know very little about any of the work that goes into creating those things I’m paralyzed to ask in fear of being told it's impossible. The best solution around this though is just to ask regardless, the worst they can say is no and even if they do just raising that problem might sway or make other people chime in.

Lastly, something that did progress without a major new problem rearing its ugly head is giving feedback. I try to stay as constructive as possible when giving feedback, isolating, and pointing out issues I have with the game. They may be subjective from time to time but I always try and phrase it in a way that sounds more like a suggestion rather than a correction. This does backfire a little bit when looking at games I either have no idea what’s going on or have much interest in the core mechanics, so only then do I fall quiet, mainly because I have nothing to say.