Stepping Into Project Management

While nearing the completion of Rise Of The Jemhaji's early prototype, we decided that instead of keeping a mental list of things to do and getting dizzy with the amount of tasks we would have, we needed to get organised. Not only was this a way to clear our minds so we could think about other things during the day, but also a way to stay on task and on time with our hopeful release date. With a little bit of knowledge of project management techniques under our belt, a decision was made to make use of that knowledge and sign up to Jira.

Our First Board

For those of you that don't know, Jira is a platform which allows you to manage and keep track of tasks during software development using Agile techniques. We had 2 of these techniques to choose from: Kanban and Scrum. We have decided to use Kanban because it's the simpler choice of the 2. Instead of sprints and user stories, we get to use fun little to-do lists on a board which is perfect for a smaller team.

Near the end of the prototype's development, we created our first board just to get a feel of how it worked. It was a simple board with 3 lists: To-Do, In Progress and Done. While this worked for the completion of the prototype, we knew that to make a fully fledged game, the board had to be more detailed so we knew exactly what was going on.

Upgrading The Process

To upgrade our board and also learn a little more about how Jira works, we decided to complete a LinkedIn Learning course to find out more. From that course we learnt how to make our board more efficient and more accurate to our development process:

1) First we created a workflow map to visualise how a feature is moved through from planning and design to being added to the completed build of the game.

2) We then used this workflow map to add the appropriate lists to our Kanban board.

Most Kanban boards also include a backlog list at the beginning, however with Jira there is a separate page for that so our board doesn't need the list. We also decided to add limits to some of the lists so we wouldn't be doing too much at once.

It's Getting Epic!

Another useful feature of Jira's Kanban is Epics. The use of these is to keep track of larger chunks of your software/game's development. You can place individual tasks into an Epic and as you complete these tasks, you slowly start completing that Epic.

We currently have 3 Epics in the project: Finish Early Prototype, Version 0.1 and Freelance Pieces.

• Finish Early Prototype: This Epic is exactly as it says on the tin. All the tasks for the early prototype were organised into this Epic and, as you can see, there's a green tick meaning that it's complete (but you already knew that!)
• Version 0.1: This Epic will hold all of the tasks relating to Version 0.1 of Rise Of The Jemhaji. As development progresses more versions, and therefore more Epics, will be added that are similar to this one. By breaking up development into multiple versions, it makes the process more manageable - each version must be completed with little to no bugs before we move onto the next version.
• Freelance Pieces: This keeps track of everything being sent to, and received from, freelancers that we're working with. This will help manage each piece that we commission by seeing if requirements need to be sent, if the first drafts have been received and if the final product has been received. To help with this, tasks that rely on freelancers will be moved around the Kanban board using the Planning/Design list and 3 new ones: Requirements Sent, 1st Draft Received and Final Product Received. 

With this new found organisation to our development process, we hope that it will go a lot smoother and we'll be able to stay on top of the tasks we need to complete to get this game to you! Now all that's left is to add some tasks and continue to create Rise Of The Jemhaji.

To see if we can stay on schedule, follow us on our social media accounts!