Transition to New Team and COVID Work

For me the it was not the transition of online meetings and remote work that made the past two weeks difficult. Personally, the team has done an excellent job of adjusting to these new forums, and things are moving rather smoothly. However, there been some significant bumps in that road, mainly because three of our four programmers are without tech at the moment due to computer issues. And while we still truck on and those without tech find ways to compromise, I think back on the two weeks preceding Spring Break.

We did a lot of planning in those two weeks, mainly in a continuing effort to onboard and integrate ideas from new team members. However, plans solidified rather quickly, and it looked like we had something to start integrating. Yet we kept talking about the same thing, getting more and more specific and repeating more or less the same information. Sprints began to be loaded down with to much research and clarifying mechanics when we had a good enough idea to start implementing.

With all of that in retrospect and with quarantine putting things in perspective, the team is starting to see we may have spent to much time thinking about the game and not developing it. So I can only wonder what the game could have looked like now if we started integrating something before Spring Break.

Mabey, if we had the Staff system in, we could have moved on to testing, or if the wrist UI had been integrated, we could have moved onto other UI elements. However, at the moment, all of that is getting put in as I type this.

Yet, I can't place all the blame on the team, that would be immature. In all honesty, I haven't brought up a lot of this to them because I still feel as if I'm on the boarders of the team. That if I try and make suggestions or critics of the directions, there would be more push back seeing how I A: was not on the original team; and B: I would be running things differently then how the other producers do so. That is really what I wish I could have gotten a handle on earlier in the project, if I had fully integrated myself into the team in my own head I think a lot of what I pointed out before could have changed. I would have been more vocal about the pace of the project and have been more willing to subject changes in focus and scope to fit the project better.

However, that's the past and the only thing I can do about that is act if it appears in future projects. As well as start adjusting my behavior so hopefully we can steer the project away from planning and into development.