Scope

After getting the green light on the Colony 7 pitch, we entered pre production with a grand scheme that was very large in scope, but seemed achievable at the time.

As production went on, hurdles were encountered with various technical aspects of the games functionality which slowed down the production itself. While technical hurdles are mostly common in all projects, it soon became a realisation that the team had not taken into consideration the potential for these hurdles to arise when defining the scope against deadlines. The effect this had on production was that with each hurdle encountered, that may have taken a day or possibly two to fix, we were losing time to implement the various other systems. In the weeks leading up to the feature complete deadline, to resolve this issue, we had to make extreme cuts to content that we had run out of time to implement. This meant that we had to cut our first level, which caused disappointment among the team. On the back of this, when weekly sprints were consistently not being met, it allowed for deflation to seep within the ranks as there was seemingly a lack of progress.

Moving forward, I’ve learnt that setting an achievable scope is highly important so that the team are being given realistic goals, this not only avoids disappointment but it also avoids loss of motivation within the team. The process of making a game can be turned into one itself by setting smaller, more achievable goals for designers and programmers to hit and be rewarded with the fun and positivity we look to install in our players.