Image Source: Falmouth Online University Canvass
This week’s spark activity involves carrying out a SWOT analysis. Normally, a SWOT analysis is used to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in relation to a business opportunity, or as part of a planning exercise.
In this instance, the technique is applied as a means of reviewing the team’s performance so far. The aim is to harness the team’s intuition to identify areas of teamwork that might benefit from data collection.
Below is the SWOT analysis for myself in the team AMPMB. These are what I feel are my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths: My communication is strong & I have a good work ethic. I feel this one is very important when building and working as part of a cohesive team. Since the project is being made in Unreal Engine, my knowledge and experience in UE4 is very valuable. Many of the team members do not have much experience in UE4 which leads into one of my other strengths, supportiveness. I am very supportive of other individuals and members within the group. If they have questions or need help with any of the things that they want to add, I am a valuable resource to them and will help them in any way that I can. After the first feedback session from the practice pitch, it filled me with confidence and this translated well, turning that feedback into
a much more solid gameplay experience. Not only can I do engine work but I can also animate using a suite of tools such as Blender, iClone, and Unreal Engine. I can also model which I did for the main characters in the game.
Weaknesses: My biggest weakness which I guess is also considered a threat are my other commitments outside of University. My work which is also in games has me busy a lot during the week. I also now work for Xbox magazine as a writer with deadlines to meet on reviews and interviews. I also feel the game we are working on has turned out quite ambitious so I tend to prioritise my practical work over my written work. The team are all using source control on gitlab and I really don't get it or understand it that well. I have made an effort to try and use it but have favoured using online sharing storage such as one drive or google drive. Part of my weakness also comes in the form of time management. Time management trickles down into many of the other categories such as family time, personal projects, work/life balance and I feel putting 20 hours a week into this isn't enough. This is probably why I do prefer working solo a majority of the time because I am in control over everything. Working as part of a team without time constraints would be easier.
Opportunities:
Like many people there are also a lot of opportunities for me to learn new things. I mentioned above that most of the team are inexperienced in Unreal Engine, however many of them have great skills in other areas. Miranda is so good at art and level design so I think she has a lot to offer in terms of layout. Both Bartosz and Pedro are great with shaders and vertex animations and they made some really cool stuff for the game to really bring the levels to life. Michael is great at modelling and animation and made a really complex spider animation which serves as a boss creature early on in the game. I think other opportunities would have been stuff like doing more modelling for the team and having someone else take over engine work for a day or two to get their confidence up and to allow a break from coding and programming. As mentioned above, two of my weaknesses were source control and working as a group. I think these can easily be translated into opportunities as well. Source control is more of a lack of understanding so I could always lean on others like Pedro for help with this, ultimately helping me to work in a group also.
Threats:
My biggest threat I feel can sometimes be myself. Sometimes I feel like nothing is good enough and I hate everything I do. I have a deep sense of failure and have to dig myself out of this hole. This is irrespective of good feedback, this is my own high standards and wanting to better. I sometimes have to remind myself I have been doing this for less than 2 years and I am all self taught.
Another threat is I thought there would have been more guidance on the course as there isn't as much as I would have liked. Being new to this, I figured it would have been more exercise based on certain topics like how to rig and animate with ease and other common game development tips. Although I understand the course is new and the team are still finding their feet.
I also feel like with a lot of the themes have taken me out of my comfort zone. I usually only make horror themed games and as a result, doing projects like this on a theme make me feel like I am not able to do things as good as I usually do. However I understand this can also be used as an opportunity to try new things.
TEAM SWOT ANALYSIS:
On top of doing the personal SWOT analysis for myself, we also worked on a team version of the SWOT analysis where we discussed as a team what we felt our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. Our biggest strength was probably our sense of teamwork as previously in the course, we were asked to discuss the inner workings of a team and it's cohesiveness. We feel that as a team we work really well and have always communicated well. We keep things professional and respect each other and their views. This I feel has lead to a great working capacity and I would gladly work with them again.
In regards to our group weaknesses we felt that we have a general lack of experience. As mentioned in my personal SWOT analysis, I mentioned that I am the only one who has a majority of experience in UE4 meaning it is a shared feeling that a lot of the game making process is being dependant on me. In terms of ability mix, we have a large number of animators and riggers and modellers but very thin on artists and programmers.
For opportunities we all felt that learning from one another was our biggest opportunity. As discussed, we all have several defining abilities that will help us learn from each other via transferable skills.
Our biggest threat we decided was our mixed abilities and experience levels which ultimately would lead to burnout. This is due to the monotonous nature of doing the same thing day in and day out and having no variety on wat we work on.
TEAM GOALS: Finally for this week, once the SWOT analysis is complete, use the findings to identify metrics that have the potential to generate insight and either confirm the strengths and opportunities, or mitigate the weaknesses and threats. I have outlined the goals below that we decided on as a team. As part of this exercise we have also been asked to complete the following.
Decide upon one or more goals based on the SWOT analysis exercise.
Design a set of questions that will be used to assess your team's progress against each goal.
For each question, identify metrics that will generate insight in relation to each question.
Formalise a strategy for collecting data related to each metric. This can be manual, automated or hybrid.
Implement the strategy and begin collecting data. You will need this data later in the module.
Questions: Are we taking enough notes in meetings for people who can't attend? Can we have a system where we write our goals for the day to encourage us.
Can we plan our content locks up until the deadline?
Metrics: By appointing a note taker at the start of each meeting (personal meetings) not tutor lead as these are recorded. Then post the notes from each session on our discord page where they can catch up with what was discussed.
Each day, we post what we are going to work on in Discord so the tutor can see visibility of this and so can the team. That way, when we have our personal meetings on a Wednesday we can review the week and discuss. This also has a ripple effect on others so they can see who is doing what and hopefully generate more enthusiasm for the others within the team.
With 2 weeks left to go, we should be planning what needs to be done by when. Couple this with the daily target setting mentioned above. I can confirm we have set August 6th for our mechanic deadline lock and the week after 13th August as our art deadline lock. With the final week being used for debugging and testing. This will help us stay on track and ensure we are not scrambling last minute. Strategy: I will begin collecting data on this each day/week remaining and compile into a separate document.
REFLECTION:
This week has been a pretty interesting week. Doing the SWOT analysis with the rest of the team on ourselves and as a group really opened up our eyes to some of the pitfalls we have started to notice. For example, as the development of the game has moved forwards, people have started to realise that there is little they can do to help in certain areas. For example, mechanic implementations and coding is largely comprised of me ensuring this is done.
Likewise, drawing and concept art is not my strong suit, so we have all decided as one of our pieces of team reflection to better support each other by leaning on each other for support.
Comments