What is Workflow?

Work•flow /ˈwərkflō/

“The sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.” – lexico.com

What is a quality workflow?  How do we develop it?  Below are elements of the production cycle that most creative people move through as they create something.  First, we must identify the stages of project production. What is each stage and what are the quality checks for each stage.  Read on and find out!

 

Stages of Creation Development

Below is the workflow I was taught in my 19-20 Game Design class, along with the things I also implemented or changed to benefit the team and the individual teammates I worked with, while I took both roles of the product manager and the scrum master. This doesn’t mean its foolproof to work on every group, and it should be changed to fit your needs specifically.

Inspiration

How do we find ideas to develop?

• Tool: journal, notebooks, file
• Process: write a note/memo for every lightbulb. make a file on the PC that stores interesting images and stories save and look back on for inspiration. Revisit them when stuck for inspiration.
• How to measure quality: Once in a while take a read on the journal/ contents to see if the ideas are still good. Revisit it frequently and if it still feels bland after reading it multiple times, cross it out but don’t erase it entirely.
• Who measures quality: Teammates and yourself (people who care about it, and will maybe make something out of the idea)

Intention

How do we clarify our specific goal(s) for a project?

• Tool: organizing idea by the column of Intention, Why, How
• Process: write down and share with teammates (some people have shared without asking), so people would be a little familiar with each other. We can’t predict what other people intend to do (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). (I personally don’t think people should be ashamed of something personal in order for progress to happen, but I doubt everyone else thinks the same way, so the sharing process should be drawn out by someone, not forced.)
• How to measure quality: if it has any degree of personal reason and/or how they think they should go about the intention in detail, it should be good.
• Who measures quality: individuals themselves foremost, but teammates can definitely know if it’s depthless writing.

Pre-production

How can we brainwrite, brainstorm, storyboard, and plan our ideas at this phase?

• Tools: papers and pencil(Trello or Google Docs), ideas journal
• Process: the whole group huddles around a table(or an online conference call, in the time of COVID) with some decent ideas from their journal picked out. One person(the most organized- this should be the project manager) take note of all ideas. Individuals pitch the idea to their teammates, and the team discusses how it can be explored and what the limitations would be, and collectively agree on what idea(s, it can combine two or more into something totally new) to take on for the session.
• How to measure quality: team agreement would correlate with the strength of the idea, and how foolproof it is.
• Who measures quality: the team- if the teammates don’t enjoy the idea, it will not result in the creation of a quality product.

Production

How do we communicate with each other and execute our plan for this phase? This is where we actually make the project.

• Tools: Trello, Hacknplan, Dundocs (websites that offer sharable, cloud-saving organization methods)
• Process: system of organizing by category. backburner/in progress/need help/done, other categories such as ‘videos, guides/documentation/code database’ can be used for easily transporting them between teammates.
• How to measure quality: consistent upkeep by the teammates as the game is being developed, and constantly referring to the team’s main means of organization.
• Who measures quality: The project manager should be in charge of keeping the boards organized, but the teammates shouldn’t ignore it because someone else is handling it.

Post-production

How do we communicate with each other and execute our final stages of the project for this phase? This is where we publish the project.

• Tools: communication idea already planned out above
• Process: On top of what has been described above, teammates should know that any critical errors can break the whole project. It’s good to remind them to let the group know if something serious happens or ask for help if something might not be done in time. I, as an artist for the teams I’ve been on, generally found myself to be done with the tasks I’m most applicable to earlier than the other teammates. During half of my post-production time, I was on standby to be a helping hand to others in case something happened. This is probably a good idea for other teams as well, as it helps people already finished wasting time (likely art or sound). Also, save constantly!
• How to measure quality: from time to time, assess the work currently finished compared to the deadline date. If the whole team is productive and making steady progress, it should be good, especially as we’re not limited to the 1hr/day, 5day/week due to COVID, and the nature of online learning.
• Who measures quality: scrum master should be the one recording work done, and also motivating their teammates.

Presentation/Performance

How do we share our project with our learning community, advisory members, and the world?

• Tools: while I have no experience with it, itch.io was recommended last year for competitions.
• Process: other students or advisory members play the game on the individual itch.io links and write down impressions and comments. Students report on the process (recorded gameplay) via an online meeting and discuss the game with their classmates and advisory members.
• How to measure quality: comments from classmates and advisory members should give an insight into how well the presentation itself and the game played out. Recording the presentation and listening to it after it ended will provide a ‘third-person’ judgment of the mistakes and will improve the individual’s presentation process.
• Who measures quality: Other people can help by providing feedback for the presentation, but actual development won’t happen unless the individual is fully prepared with multiple practices.

Feedback

How do we conduct a feedback session at the end of the project development cycle?

• Tool: Blog, discussion with teammates
• Process: besides the Edublogs (which I think is well-flushed out), I found that talking with the team about the previous few weeks in terms of team and individual performance boosted positivity and confidence, while also increasing self-awareness and made people realize some errors they made while working.
• How to measure quality: quality of the discussions should be constructive, but not too overall ‘nice’.
• Who measures quality: the teammates. if individuals like the feedback they received, they’ll work on improving the qualities pinpointed by others.