Project Management
We used Trello to assign and keep track of tasks and problems encountered during development, and to discuss implementation specifics for tasks. Tasks were assigned during meetings and group members kept their cards up to date (by adding comments and moving the cards between 'To Do', 'In Progress', 'Review' and 'Done' sections) so the entire group could track the progress of different sections, as many aspects of the project were dependent on several others.
At least 2 group members were assigned to most tasks to allow group members to work collaboratively. We used Checklists to track progress through different cards (tasks), which also doubled as milestones during development.
To ensure all members were on the same track and could communicate effectively with members working on other sections that relied on theirs, we arranged two 1-hour weekly meetings and two 2-hour group coding sessions per week. The first meeting of the week was used primarily for discussing and assigning new tasks to group members for the week. All group members would be allocated at least 2 different tasks to work on throughout the week. The second meeting of the week was used for group members to update the team on their progress and identify any blocks which may stop them from delivering by the end of the week.
Group coding sessions were used as an opportunity to encourage collaborative coding between group members assigned to the same tasks. This helped us to create solid project foundations in the first few weeks that we used to build on top of for the rest of the project. Group coding sessions was also a solution to reduce the probability of our identified project risks (outlined in our Project Plan), such as project deliverables not being completed before the due date, and group members having different ideas of how to implement a feature.
In hindsight, we should have spent longer in the first few weeks learning the ins and outs of Unity, to help create a more efficient project structure from day one. We ended up spending a large amount of time reformatting/restructuring code that was written with little knowledge of exactly how it would fit in to the final deliverable.
We also could have improved on updating Trello tasks more frequently, as this was our main method of task allocation and task tracking throughout development. Several avoidable issues during the project were caused by lack of communication between team members, which could be fixed by letting others know exactly what you're working on.
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We followed the Rational Unified Process cycle, implementing 1-week iteration cycles. We started each week with a meeting to allocate tasks among team members and from the 2nd iteration onwards also re-capped on the previous week to make sure there were no dangling tasks left over from the previous iteration. We also made sure all features developed during the week were fully tested before starting the next week's iteration.
Iteration 1/Week 7: project plan
Iteration 2/Week 8: design docs
Iterations 3/Week 9: core project foundations - character design, level design, player mechanics, welcome screen etc.
Iterations 4/Week 10: build on foundations and add some extra design features - advanced player mechanics, achievement system, 2.5D parallax background etc.
Iterations 5/Week 11: finish extra design features and implement advanced features - online leaderboard and replay system
We found the Rational Unified Process to be far more effective of a development process than the waterfall approach, as it made it much easier to adapt to inevitable new changes/obstacles encountered during development.