Hockey at PacSci — Jeffrey Prime

Hockey at Pacific Science Center

Summery

Hockey at Pacific Science Center is a collection of mini games used to promote the Faster Than Ever exhibit at Pacific Science Center in the winter of 2021. Players complete a series of mini games looking to earn enough stars to join the local hockey team. Along the way, the player is able to learn about hockey’s past, the science behind hockey, and the different ways hockey can be played. Do you have what it takes to make the team?

Game Page

Development

Team size: Ten (2 programmers, 4 artists, 3 designers and 1 producer)
Duration: Two months
Work hours: 20 hours per developer per week
Engine: Unity
Platform: PC

My Responsibilities

Lead team through Sprint Planning and Sprint Review while documenting those conversations.
Create and own the product backlog and development plan with consultation from the rest of the team.
Break down large complex tasks into meaningful sub-tasks, with the help of team leads, and track team progress using HacknPlan.
Hold regular meetings with team leads to discuss status, completion of action items, resolve issues and share information.
Foster and enhance creative working relationships with the development team.

Postmortem

What Went Right

Open communication - team members were open and willing to communicate with each other when needed
Feedback - all team members were open to suggestions, from mini game design to art style
We were well-organized, especially later in development
Teamwork - team members frequently helped each other out with development tasks
Team building - the team made a concerted effort to build and maintain strong relationships during production

What Went Wrong

Team: client had a different vision of the game than the team’s first proposal
Team: some members had issues using version control
Team: inconsistent use of documentation (both writing and reading)
Team: talked over each other on voice calls leading to frustration
Production: Failure to check progress of work on a consistent basis

What We Learned

We need to take in account every team member’s throughput, everyone is not the same
Reviewing documentation can alleviate a lot of stressors
Need to spend more time on iteration and tuning sooner
Any knowledge gaps need to addressed ASAP
We need to do a better job of tracking time estimation for tasks