Wild's Pyre Dev Log #1 - Michael Poulos

Welcome back, everyone, to another semester! I hope you've all had a great winter break. Minus-One Productions is pleased to announce that pre-production for Wild's Pyre was a great success. We were able to create simulated gameplay that showed us a snapshot of what our final product would feel like to play. There are still some complications, though. Mainly not knowing exactly how we'd implement our fire spreading and burn timer systems. 

One thing that surprised me was how another team mentioned that they were able to complete their master schedule, project plan document, and risk analysis documents weeks before the final presentations. My team and I had to meet two (sometimes three) times every week outside of class to complete all that documentation just before the final showcases. The strategy my team has been employing is to work outside of meeting times as little as possible but meet at the same time every week and then have all members contribute to one section of each document at a time. You might think, "Wouldn't that take too much time"? Why wouldn't you divide and conquer each section to individual members?" This strategy may not work for all teams, but it's what we preferred. With this strategy, we all felt that each choice we made was unanimously agreed upon and that everyone made meaningful contributions. We would have a "conversation leader" role that would alternate between us all so that no one was left watching others do all the work. Eventually, when the first draft of the whole document was completed, each member would be assigned an equal amount of the document to look over, spell check, re-word, etc. That would be our homework for the week to complete on our own time.

 I wonder what all of you think of this method. What would your team struggle with the most if you used this method? Would you consider employing this method in the future? Do you already use a similar method?