Tag: Week 5 – M730

Week 5.1 – 25th June. 2021

Building Trust in Virtual Project Teams

I started this week with an academic article; Building and Nurturing Trust Among Members in Virtual Project Teams, by Lukić and Vračar

They discuss the advantages of working remotely, and in virtual project teams, how productive it is, what skills you learn, the way to build trust in virtual project teams, and suggest methods and activities that can help strengthen trust in remote teams.

“One of the major trends widely adopted by

numerous businesses worldwide is the establishment of virtual project teams, which allows members to work

from remote locations regardless of their time zone, nation or culture and to collaborate using various information systems and technologies.”

(Lukić and Vračar 2018)

I found this reading to fit perfectly with the Co – Creative Design & Development Practice module we are currently in, especially for our team!

We have 3 different time zones, 3 different countries, and we all use different systems and technologies to one another, with totally different personalities.

Lukić and Vračar, discuss methods and activities such as;

• New approaches to recruiting an effective team leader.
• Establishing behaviour.
• Creating a reward system for performance.
• Maintaining a positive organisation.
• Having regular and reliable communication, such as; virtual team meetings, and occasional face-to-face meetings.
• Organising team-building activities.

Implementing new activities – to help with Team Development

Since the new team leader has taken over the role, I feel the above methods and activities, are already in place, however the last point mentioned, is really the only thing we need to put into action, to build more trust throughout our team.

But right now since we are working towards the practice pitch and checking all the art work is correct, that it has been converted to pixel art, the basic mechanics are working for one of the main characters, the name of the game is confirmed, with documents in play, such as Trello, Google Drive, Miro, and we are working on our communication, through the use of Discord, I think we are in a very strong position, trust is building, very slowly…but surely which is helping the team to create a strong bond, roots are taking place.

Distributed Scrum – Part 1

In Alcwyn Parker’s video, he reveals where and how issues can arise with communication – most of the time, meetings are where the problems start, not from what was said, but the tone it was said in.

“Each team member should take ownership of their own decision’s made whilst in a meeting”

(Parker 2020)

I feel this is an area we struggle with, although we are working on making ourselves clear, it seems we need to work harder with our communication, especially in webinar meetings. One thing I shall put into action is;

• To research some of the other avenues the guys are working on, so I can gain a better understanding of the technical terminology. Which will be one less conversation we need to worry about, and focus on the actual game development.

Distributed Scrum – Part 2

Since the second video discusses the use of the Trello Board, for organisation with the simple Kanban board, I thought I would show ours, and what the team is individually working on, has completed and needs to do.

Scrum Strategy

Each team member in a scrum meeting, should have access to the team content, and should be able to ask the question;

• What did I do yesterday?
• What am I going to do today?
• Do I have any blockers?

According to the scrum strategy, the scrum master should be in all meetings, to make sure that the direct line of communication is not broken.

(Parker 2020)

Method – Alternative meetings;

• To make the webinars at different times of the week, where all the team can be present, rather than put all the weight on the scrum masters shoulders, and for him to attend every meeting, for all different time zones and report to the others.
• I think its a much more friendly approach to do what we are currently doing, meet every wednesday at 12pm which suits everyone, and every Monday at 6pm with our supervisor. Plus in between we communicate more throughout the week, on the Discord channel, and always try and comment on each others work, just so we know we are all on the same level, and there is no miscommunication.

Week 5.2 – 29th June. 2021

Design Style Guides

A document that sets out the clear guidelines of a brands visual identity, and is to be upheld by all team members, can be short or long, but allows each team member to be working on their own thing, whilst keeping on track with the brand of the company.

Why create a style guide?

The points below are just some of the reasons, why all company’s should have this put in practice as they are;

• Quick to set up.
• Good for client communication.
• Creates consistency within the team.
• Helps simplify the collaboration process.
• Helps the new team members to understand the brand.
• Makes all communication look professional.

In keeping with the style guide content, this is what I created for the “Isometric Style Guide” in the beginning, however it wasn’t used because the tiles were created in Adobe Illustrator, and my peer wanted to convert them into pixel art, using a different application.

Mixed signals?

I wasn’t keen on this idea, as the only one thing I really wanted to add to this game, was a textured environment, which is why I spent a good couple of hours working on the tiles, to make them look as real as possible.

More importantly, the outcome was not so straight forward, and the only lesson, that I have gained from this part of the team journey is;

• To make sure you know who is doing what from the start, I suppose it all comes down to making sure you have a good clear design style guide from the beginning of the teams journey.

These are my Isometric tiles, I thoroughly enjoyed this process, especially as it was another first for me.

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How they were incorporated?

The GIF below, shows my textured grass tile – sets, from when they were placed into Unity, using the Isometric 2.5D grid.

(Figure 3 : Larkin and Norton 2021 – Grass Tile-set in Unity 2.5D)

Resolving the issue

We decided to avoid this mis- match from happening again, we started to make more time for each other, a time that fit us both to clarify each week what needed to be worked on, what was being worked on, and had been completed.

Although this is exactly how the Kanban Trello board is played out, and I do check it once a week to see what everyone is working on, and I have been updating for the guys, as I had agreed when we were distributing the documents, however I think we all as individuals need to update it at least once a week ourselves, so that we are all on the same page.

Style Guide below for; The Wild Branch

Week 5.3 – 30th June. 2021

Charting The Course: The Effects of Team Charters

McDowell, Herdman and Aaron’s academic study is focused on finding ways to improve team performance. Their research looks closely at how, ‘Team Charters‘, help with improved process outcomes, including a list of characteristics such as; communication, effort, support and the over all bond between the team.

Communication within a team is an important facet of the team’s overall teamwork quality. Frequent, informal and direct communication among team members is important to team functioning and performance

(Hoegl & Gemuenden, 2001).

(McDowell, Herdman, and Aaron. 2011)

Improved Development

McDowell, Herdman and Aaron discovered that teams who were introduced to the team charter from the beginning, increased their level of key characteristics, that are important, for the creation of teamwork quality.

They encourage managers and organisations, that rely on teams to be aware of the benefits of building an effective team charter in the team formation process.

What the outcome is for our Team?

I have found the team charter to be a great way, for each member to display;

• What we each enjoy?
• Why we took the course?
• What our aims/ goals are for the end of the masters ?
• What skills we each want to develop?
• What skills we already have and what level of proficiency?

So far, I have been researching mission statements, to start the team charter, and I created a couple, but the one below is what I suggested on Discord, and the team all agreed with me.

Mission statement

The Wild Branch is committed to making games that can grow with the ever changing audiences of today, through humorous puzzle adventures.

(Norton 2021)

When looking at other mission statements, I found them to be completely unique and individual to the company or organisation.

I tried to think from a different perspective, as though we were a professional mini game company starting up, and what we would like our new potential customers to know about our style, and the audience that our games are directed to.

References

LUKIĆ, J. M. and VRAČAR, M. M. 2018. Building and nurturing trust among members in virtual project teams. Strategic Management-International Journal of Strategic Management and Decision Support Systems in Strategic Management, 23(3).

MCDOWELL, W., HERDMAN, A. and AARON, J. 2011. Charting the course: the effects of team charters on emergent behavioral norms’. Organization Development Journal, 29(1), p.79.

PARKER, A. 2020. Design Style Guides. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/913/pages/week-5-design-style-guides?module_item_id=53071 [Accessed 28/06/21]

PARKER, A. 2020. Distributed Teams Part 1. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/913/pages/week-5-distributed-scrum?module_item_id=53070 [Accessed 25/06/21]

PARKER, A. 2020. Distributed Teams Part 2. Available at : https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/913/pages/week-5-distributed-scrum?module_item_id=53070 [Accessed 25/06/21]

Full List of Figures

Figure : 1 Trello 2021 Kanban Organisation board The Wild Branch Team

Figure 2 : Norton 2021 Isometric Tree tile-set – created in Adobe Illustrator

Figure 3 : Larkin and Norton 2021 – GIF – Grass Tile-set in Unity 2.5D

Figure 4 : Land 2021 – Style Guide – for Logo