Coaching an Oregon Game Project Challenge team Peter Steinfeld – pete.steinfeld@gmail.com November 14, 2015

About me Professional software developer at IBM Manage two small software development teams Coached OGPC teams from Hillsboro High School in 2013 and 2014

OGPC Main Event Contest in Salem in April or May Three judging criteria Game Presentation Questioning by experts

Organizing your team Get help from a teacher Get a technical expert Recruit team members Arrange transportation to the main even and a space to meet Get a technical expert Pick a time and place to meet Communicating with your team Get everyone’s email address Get a central place to post information, Google Docs, for example

Running the project with Agile Development Agile Development is used at IBM, Intel, Google, … Assign roles to all team members Product owner – interprets winning criteria Scrum master – scheduling and “to do” list Developers – coding, art, sound effects, … Other roles -- Test master, Presentation master, Artist, Sound effects expert, Music master, Blogger Divide the project into fixed time iterations Deliver and test at the end of each iteration Have a retrospective and planning meeting One month is a good iteration duration

Running the project with Agile Development – continued … Keep a “to do” list (AKA backlog) Anyone can create a "to do" item Each item has An owner A description of the "done" criteria Gets declared "done" only when reviewed by someone else, preferable the creator At each meeting, have a scrum Everyone talks and answers the three questions What did I do since last meeting? What will I do next? Is there anything stopping me from doing what I want?

Testing with Usability Testing Have someone else use your product and observe the results Do this at the end of each iteration Performing usability testing Create something to test (game, presentation, expertise) Recruit the testers (gamers, teachers or parents, software experts) Create tasks for the testers (play the game, observe the presentation, ask questions) Prepare the testing environment (set up a game where it can be observed, set up a presentation environment, supply the experts with questions)

Testing with Usability Testing – continued … Run the tasks and observe the results Tell the testers that we're testing the game, not them Tell the testers you want feedback on how to improve Ask them to talk about what's going on in their heads while they test Run the test -- observer and take notes Consolidate the observations and create "to do" items

Developing the game Pick a game development platform Unity, GameMaker, Scratch (MIT), Minecraft, Stencyl, Twine, RPG Maker Create a prototype early and improve on it Game development roles include coders, visual artists, sound effects people, musicians

Dealing with kids Have the kids do all of the work – coding, scheduling, presentation -- everything Make sure that everyone has a role and a task Focus on the goal and how to test it

My 2015 OGPC team Seven team members, me, my technical expert, and a teacher sponsor I functioned as the Agile coach and manager Unity as our game development platform We used GitHub issues and waffle.io for our backlog We blogged on Tumblr We won the “Professionalism” award

My 2015 OGPC team We had three iterations – February, March, April At the end of each iteration, we had a usability test session Brought in high school kids to play the game Brought in teachers and parents to see our presentation and give feedback on its clarity and interest Brought in professional programmers to ask us about our coding techniques, our software tools, and our development methodology

My 2015 OGPC team Our GitHub repository -- https://github.com/Combustible-Lemons/OGPC-2015 Our “to do” list -- https://waffle.io/Combustible-Lemons/OGPC-2015 Our blog -- https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ogpccombustiblelemons

Thank you for participating Contact me if you need help -- Pete.Steinfeld@gmail.com