Planning for Proof of Concept Tech

Proof of Concept Tech, as we define it at the Guildhall at SMU, is the milestone in which the development team verifies the game concept is attainable in the game engine. For this milestone my team is responsible for four distinct levels. These include a programmer sandbox, a level design whitebox, an art reference level, and a production level, which contains UI elements and sound.

When planning for this milestone my team used the fundamentals of Scrum to help us. We created a Product Backlog to get a wholistic view of the requirements of the project. After creating the product backlog, we took the highest priority tasks from the list and started to break them down into more detailed tasks.

One of the most important parts of this process is letting the team members make estimates for how long each task should take. This really helps the team members fully commit to the project. There is no other person telling them how long it should take for them to complete a task. They are the only ones who truely understand how much they know and how long it will take them to complete their task. That doesn't always mean that they make perfect estimates on their tasks, but after the task is completed they have a better understanding for the next time they plan a similar task.