Team Post Mortem

Throughout the development process of Coastal News Network, we had many successes but also encountered a few problems. We had our first success right off the bat: determining the type of game we wanted to create, and the story that we wanted to tell. We all feared that this would be hard, since it required 5 people all with different game preferences and play styles to decide on a singular game, but somehow, we almost immediately dove in on a game idea that we were all excited about, and thus we started our journey with optimism. This optimism was maintained throughout the development process, so we basically just had success after success. Everyone did their share of the work, and the work they produced was outstanding. No one was late on anything, and anytime we arrived at a major decision point, we just had a meeting to just shoot ideas off of each other until something was said that we all loved. Once we were further in the development process and had a stable foundational concept, we were able to receive feedback on game aspects, and that also assisted in our development process. The typing portion of our game was an idea that we had received through feedback, and it really helped our game achieve the feel that we were aiming for. Finally, we completed our game with no hiccups, so that was a success as well.

Coming to the problems, I can't recall any major problems that we encountered during our process. A smaller problem that I can recall was that we often talked about our ideas during in-person meetings, but never wrote them down anywhere. Thus, we had to rely on our memories to remember what new ideas were brought up to be able to implement them later. This thankfully did not cause any issues for us and everything ran smoothly, the only thing was that we often had to ask the other team members for a refresher in case we forgot something, but someone had always remembered. However, the possibility that everyone would have forgotten still exists, so I think if we had just kept a document of our vision for the game and kept it updated after meetings, it would have greatly assisted us, and sped up our workflow by a tiny bit. 

This was my first time being in a managerial position in a team, and while I initially struggled, I later found my groove. I learned that my main job was to just keep the team on track, which meant checking in with the team and team members occasionally, making sure they had their pieces completed. If I was able to keep the members on track, then the process would also be on track. I am lucky to be on a team where all the members were extremely communicative and timely, so that made my job a lot easier. Because my team members didn't need much managing, just the occasional check in would suffice, I was able to easily keep our game and the development process on track, with no hurdles and many successes.