Through out the project we needed to have ways to communicate without and see where we were all at. This is where the scrum meetings and Trello came in, we had a group board on Trello with all of our tasks that needed doing, what was in progress and what had been completed.
We often used it to send each other links of videos we thought were helpful and we could also comment on each others tasks to see where they were at. Although towards the end of the project we did stop using it as much due to the lack of tasks and we all had a good idea of where everyone was at.
This was actually very helpful especially for myself and Emma as we were doing the VFX and modelling and often needed tutorials on what to do.
Not only did we use Trello but we did have scrum meetings from time to time to sit down ad discuss the plans for the week, this came in handy during filming so we could all agree on what days were good for filming and booking out the cameras. Scrum is important as it is based on the idea of making decisions on what is known, it involves transparency, inspection and adaption. I think we mostly did all three, we all knew where our issues were at and we talked about how to get past and solve them. Once again, we ended up dropping this at the end during Pre Production when most people knew what they were doing. We also didn't follow the "scrum rules" as shown in the slideshow we were given about scum meetings. The majority of our meetings consisted of "what needs doing?" instead of going back and viewing all of our work and what could be improved ( we left that to the teachers) so although we did have meetings we never stood or really discussed our problems, not that we had many minus one member.
Scrum has roles that need to make it work, the scrum masters who were our teachers and make sure that we (the scrum team) knew what we were doing and could maximize our efforts. And then us the scrum/development team, we had to remain a small enough group but large enough that we could complete work on time efficiently but small enough that the work was spread out evenly and everyone had something. We had to be self organizing which we were and must have no titles and must all be equal. We did call Brandon the "leader" but he never acted as one and we all were equal to eachother.
The heart of scrum is Sprint, its basically the time frame between development and a product. You plan a sprint and during that time try to make as much work as possible whilst having scrum meetings between before the deadline. The scrum team delivers product features at the end of each sprint then the "owner" would decided if to except the product, either way a new sprint would occur.
This was a good method of communicating but I wish we used it consistently especially during certain times a member refused to do work that he was assigned to on Trello. But, Trello especially did help us out alot when looking at how tasks were coming along.
Additionally, we did have a Gantt Chart for Pre Production but we never used it once, we only made it for the Pre Production Presentation and then it got pushed to side and we used Trello instead due to it being a much more easier way of seeing what tasks need doing and we could communicate as well. It was also a rough version of a Gantt Chart and not the final decisions of when work was due so that was also probably why we never used it.
The last way of communicating and sharing work was our Google Drive and Google accounts. We made around 8 in total throughout the whole thing, all of them had ridiculous names but we had to have fun somehow. We used those accounts to upload our work as we went along in the different stages so we didn't get confused between work. Apart from having to create a new account every 2 weeks it was a good way of sharing work with each-other when it needed to be passed around.
Throughout the project I think I managed to be "agile" this means I was able to respond to issues in the project as they came up and solved them by making the necessary changes. It also means I was able to balance multiple projects at once.For example, I was testing out basic rigs on the tester models of the robot arm I was making whilst improving the model in another scene and building the drone and tower at the same time, so I was constantly improving and doing my work.
In conclusion our meetings could have been more frequent, maybe at least 2 times a week and we should have kept up with our management through out, especially towards the end when it was crucial.
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