I´ve encountered a few challenges in coordinating the teams:
3.1 Lack of Clear Roles and Responsibilities: Without defined roles and responsibilities, team members may face confusion and ambiguity, leading to inefficiencies and coordination issues. It becomes essential to establish clear roles and ensure that team members understand their responsibilities.
3.2 Communication and Collaboration: In a small company, communication and collaboration are crucial for effective coordination. Without an established framework, it can be challenging to foster effective communication channels, share information, and ensure that everyone is aligned with project goals.
3.3 Limited Planning and Prioritization: In the absence of agile methodologies, there may be a lack of structured planning and prioritization processes. This can result in inefficient use of resources, unclear project timelines, and difficulty in managing dependencies between different tasks and team members.
3.4 Adaptability to Change: Agile methodologies emphasize flexibility and adaptability to changing requirements. Without such methodologies, the level design team may struggle to respond effectively to evolving project needs, leading to delays, rework, or missed opportunities for improvement.
4.1 Implementing Lightweight Agile Practices: Introduce lightweight agile practices that align with the company's size and culture. This may include adopting elements of Scrum, such as regular stand-up meetings, backlog management, and iterative development cycles, to provide structure and improve coordination.
4.2 Establishing Clear Roles and Responsibilities: Clearly define roles and responsibilities within the level design team. Communicate expectations and ensure that team members understand their individual contributions to the overall project.
4.3 Improving Communication Channels: Establish effective communication channels to facilitate information sharing and collaboration. This may involve regular team meetings, using project management tools for task tracking, and encouraging open and transparent communication among team members.
4.4 Introducing Incremental Planning and Prioritization: Introduced a lightweight planning process that focuses on incremental development and prioritization. This allows the team to break down tasks into manageable units, set achievable milestones, and adapt plans as needed.
4.5 Embracing Iterative Development and Feedback: Encouraged an iterative development approach that incorporates regular feedback loops from stakeholders, team members, and playtesting. This last step was trickier since we didn´t have a structured and approved NDA contract to recruit players to test our game. This process as a whole enables continuous improvement, enhances the quality of level design, and helps address any emerging issues early on.
To promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement, I´ve facilitated knowledge-sharing amongst team members, encouraging professional development, and had always kept myself open for conversations about our processes for potential optimizations and adjusting according to the teams needs.