Agile Retrospective

In this post, I will share my Agile Retrospective; I will present what went well, what went wrong, and some things I learned after completing Breach. By definition, these check-ups are hold at the end of each sprint.

What worked?

In regards of what went well I would like to highlight:

Technical design

The time invested in the technical design (class diagram, activities diagram and sequence diagrams) untangled issues I faced while coding and allowed me to change and improve my code easily.

These diagrams got improved and evolved over time to fit the changes and twists demanded by Breach.

Transferable skills

Another area that went well was applying successfully to AR what I have learned on the bootcamp. Even though, the bootcamp did not have a strong learning module about AR, I was able to transfer the understanding I had over the components and interactions to design and develop an AR game.

Object Pooling

Even though Breach does not spawn a large number of Algae and Aliens, I have successfully implemented the Object Pooling pattern for each of them. 

Based on the high speed required to create and destroy Algae, implementing an Algae pool helps lowering the total cost of creating new objects. Additionally, having an Aliens pool provides a way to control the supply of reusable objects making easy to expand the number of enemies to increase the difficulty for the player without having any impact over the game performance.

What did not work?   

In regards of what didn't went well, I'd say that timing the unfamiliar parts of the project is an aspect open to improvement.  Some examples are:

Under estimation

The time required to understand how the GameObjects positioning with the AR plane seemed to be straightforward, but once in the development stage I realized that the Screen position and the plane position required double of the scheduled time to be completed.

Over estimation

The process of publishing Breach seamed overwhelming since I have never done it before, but once in the implementation stage I realized that it required half of the scheduled time to be completed. 

What could have been better? 

A way to increase quality and effectiveness mitigating or solving challenges during another phase of the Breach is described below:

Teamwork

In order to improve and prevent time planning issues from happening again in the future, I strongly advice collaborating with a tech expert to present the estimates and adjust the timeframes based their feedback. In my case, such tech expert could be my instructor.

Also, for future iterations to improve Beach, I would collaborate with a designer to spice up the animations and visual effects of the game.