[CRJ12] Finale

The last week of the module has been an opportunity to look back at the progress made during my studies, as well as to make sure I am prepared for what lies ahead.

[CRJ11] RealWORKS

This week’s material was supplemented by The Art of the Approach course on RealWORKS, the University’s career training portal. On the course, I worked through the topics of CV writing, opportunity spotting, researching employers, building a LinkedIn profile, and Cialdini’s principles of persuasion.

[CRJ10] Agile Practice

This week’s learning material explored the Agile manifesto and values, the process of envisioning after idea generation, and concepts related to effort estimation.

While taking notes, my thoughts often went back to compare this knowledge with my personal experience of Agile; trying to examine how close the teams I have worked in came to aligning themselves with its values and principles.

[CRJ9] Communities of Practice

This week, I presented the results of our final rapid ideation session with Will Ward. I also studied concepts related to communities of practice – groups that meet and engage in knowledge and experience sharing based around a common topic or problem (Pyrko, Dörfler and Eden 2016: 389-409). I reflect on my experience with both. I also took part in a short study session with fellow students.

[CRJ8] Research

This week’s materials outlined a number of user research methods, and focused heavily on ethics and classifying risk associated with it. Wednesday was also the mid-point of our second rapid ideation session, the work on which occupied most of my time.

[CRJ7] Version Control

Plenty of ground was covered over week 7. While the weekly materials were centered on version control, our cohort kicked off the second rapid ideation session.

[CRJ6.1] Interim Retrospective

As we have arrived at the middle of the first module of the Indie Games Development course, I went through my blog entries so far to reflect on my progress. Points of interest are split into start – stop – continue items as outlined by the Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance 2015).

[CRJ4] Time and Project Management

In addition to the learning material on effective time management and game jam tips, this week brought our cohort into the start of a two-week marathon. We now have an opportunity to apply the creative skills we learned about in the last sprint, as well as challenge ourselves with planning out our tasks.

[CRJ3] Rapid Ideation

In this post, I reflect on Week 3 of the Development Practice module. The week covered a number of concepts, from a continuation of the topic of ideation, to exploring rapid prototyping motivations, techniques, and opportunities in the form of game jams.

[CRJ1] Orientation

This is the first post in a series of weekly reflections on my progress in the Development Practice module I am undertaking as part of my MA. I am writing this after completing this week’s planned activities, but prior to our first weekly webinar. Considering this is the very beginning of the course, it has been light on content, but we have already touched upon Waterfall and Agile methodologies as well as academic practices and reflective writing.