Organizational tools for Voliday
Introduction
Context
During my 3rd year of Games Programming at SAE Institute Geneva, I had to participate in a specialization project where we had to create a City Builder type game on Unreal Engine 4 playable on PC with an art direction close to The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. During this project I had the role of Producer where I had to manage the schedule and prepare means of communication and places to put our written documents so that the whole project could access them.
Tools
Jira
I used Jira to plan the tasks of the members of the 3rd year Games Programming team. Jira is a project management software, you can follow the progress of tasks and bugs in a project. Here is an example of a task on Jira:
It also allows us to see where we are in the progress of the project in relation to the dates of our milestones.
Google Drive
We used Google Drive to store our documents whether it be documentation for using software or even our presentations.
Discord
We used Discord to maintain regular contact between all project members through written channels and audio rooms for each section and in common. Here is an overview of the discord:
Difficulties encountered
I had difficulties with Jira at first because I was not at all familiar with how it worked. I had to do several tests to get the hang of it so that I could create a document that explained how it worked to other members who needed to use it. I had to think about how to organize and create a file that explains where to put the documents so that all the members of the project could use it properly. With Discord I encountered the problem that some discussions could not be posted on the existing channels and so depending on the requests I had to create, modify and sometimes delete written and audio channels so that everyone had a place to exchange without infringing on other conversations. Due to the large number of channels I had to create a document to explain the functionality of each of them as well as adding these explanations to the channel descriptions.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is important to take the time to understand the software yourself to be able to create explanatory documents but also to listen to the needs of others so that they have all the necessary tools to work properly.