Today, I want to share a retrospective on my journey with task tracking tools. It's going to be a quick, candid look at what worked, what didn't, and what I learned along the way.
Trello:
The Sunlit Night team started off using Trello, which served us reasonably well. There were a few issues, like tasks not always being moved to their correct state, but overall, it did the job.
Jira:
Then, inspired by a management class I was taking, I decided to introduce Scrum principles using Jira. Admittedly, I didn't fully grasp Scrum at the time, and I ended up treating Jira like a fancier version of Trello, complete with sprints that I didn't quite understand. The result? Chaos. I struggled with the new system, and Jira's additional complexity only added to the confusion.
Side note:
During this period, I also experimented with automated bug tracking using a Google Form and integrating it with Jira.
Let's just say, I never want to touch Jiras API for the rest of my life.
Road map table:
Eventually, I stumbled upon a simple, yet effective task tracking method used by another team—a roadmap table. This table, with weeks as rows, developers as columns, and the developers’ tasks in each cell, was a game-changer in its simplicity.
Because cells can’t hold that much information, I opted to just use task titles in the cells and then put task descriptions in multiple separate documents per task group. As expected, this led to scattered information and unnecessary complexity, but I wasn’t aware of that just yet.
Miro:
Out of laziness I made another change. All our tasks were written up as sticky notes on a Miro board and then prioritized on to a road map there. Not wanting to copy all the tasks to the table, I just left them in Miro as it was also easier to read and maintain.
In hindsight, the pain of managing tasks across multiple platforms became apparent. Realizing this, I reverted back to Trello, a familiar and reliable tool for task management.
This journey taught me valuable lessons about the importance of simplicity, integration, and understanding the tools I use. It's a reminder that sometimes, going back to basics is the most effective way forward.
During the use of the Miro board, the team was getting a little frustrated at the current method of task tracking, which was fully reasonable. I wrote up a reflection on the current method and listed what I will be doing in the future.
Team announcement 2/15/24:
"On the Miro the combat side is garbage. It has never been correct or updated with what combat is doing. This is on me as I need to meet with combat to see what is going on with them as for the most part I have been letting you [designers] do your thing with no tracking. However that is not ideal and I need to know what it going on over there. So some time soon, this Tuesday at the latest, I will meet with Dayton and Tyler and update the Miro and my own knowledge.
The Miro as a whole is pretty bad.
The positives:
It is great to see everything all together on a weekly format.
*All the tasks that will/are getting done are one there.
We can see who is doing what.
The negatives:
Nothing is timebox/given a dead line. If something isn't finished it gets pushed to next week until it is done.
The details of the task are separated from the note and can be hard to find.
Colors aren't the best way to label whos task is whose.
Really only levels has been updated frequently as that is what I work on.
Users don't update their task completion except me.
There is no backlog to push stuff to that we don't have time to work on.
Task priority/size got lost and unused.
Conclusion:
I want to go back to Jira or Trello but keep it simple.
I myself need to be checking up with the road map weekly and see the progress on thing and make sure the map has the tasks on there.
I also need to timebox certain tasks so they are shut down if they take too much time and then find alternatives.
I need to people to use the board.
And more.
Actionable tasks I'll do asap:
I think I am going to move to either Jira or Trello, which ever I see fitting the needs I laid out up there.
I will check up with each department and update the task tracking to have all the tasks. During this I will keep in mind that we are aiming to make a polished game even if it will be incomplete by the end of the semester.
I will meet with the team and discuss the final goal of the game and update the task tracking based on feedback."
This reflective post to the team helped me realize what I the team and myself needed from task tracking and how we should proceed from there on.
Even though this game project was a wild ride of changes, it taught me many valuable lessons and I plan to learn from them an incorporate those lessons into my production in the future.
Comments