I believe we’ve overcome one of our biggest hurdles in this project which is simply making things functional. In the past, we’ve spent so much time planning, making things look good, or changing our approach in the middle of completing some aspect of the program. Now, we’re all just pushing code that works, ugly or not, to keep the ball rolling.
We all collectively came to this realization around the same time; during week 6 of this quarter. One of us spoke up about current progress and we all agreed it was time to focus only on functionality and let other things take a backseat. Oddly enough, we all agreed to focus initially on functionality, but somehow lost the plot.
If I were to restart this project knowing only what I know about working as a group and throwing out the knowledge I have about coding this project, I would ensure we stick to the script. Analyzing technicalities and overcomplicating things held us up by probably two weeks. Page navigation ideas and unnecessary blockers slowed productivity to a halt at times. Sticking to the script means focusing on our assigned portion and making it work no matter how bad it looks. Code, files, page locations, and other specifics can be worked out as a group after each portion works reasonably well. Especially in an asynchronous environment, pages can be designed completely separately and integrated later as a group.
Overall, the team has been great at identifying issues and overcoming them even if it takes some time to realize it. We’re currently approaching the gameplay section of our program which will certainly be difficult. Thankfully, we’re all at or close to a position where no individual must shoulder that responsibility and we can instead all lend a hand.
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