Projectizing the Work

A common pitfall in solo development projects, particularly with indie games, is a lack of planning. It can be difficult to define "done" and prioritize tasks without defining clear milestones and the steps needed to meet them. I felt myself losing some momentum on this project because when I would sit down to work on it, I either wasn't sure what I should do, or it felt like what I wanted to do wasn't what I should be doing. Over the past week, I committed some time to projectizing the work, and the impact it has had on my motivation and focus has been immediate and powerful.

I am utilizing GitHub Projects to allow for easy linking between tasks, branches, and pull requests. My first step was to create three milestones--initial gameplay prototype, CI and testing setup, and a look-and-feel first pass. I have not applied due dates to these milestones, allowing me to work on the project as I am able to. However, just by categorizing the work based on high level objectives, I now have a better idea of task priority, I have the end-state in mind, and my velocity has improved.

For each milestone, I created issues to track the high-level steps necessary to achieve the milestone goal. In the case of the "Gameplay Prototype" milestone, these issues have direct correlation with the features I identified as necessary to begin gathering real world testing feedback from friends and family.

Most issues are then broken down into the sub-tasks necessary to close the issue. I have elected not to create individual issues for each of these sub-tasks, but that may be an option for more complex issues in the future.

Taking the time to plan and projectize the work has greatly improved my motivation and velocity. Just in the past three days I've completed roughly half of the work necessary to create my first playable prototype, where before I was swirling trying to decide what to work on next. I'm very excited to continue working towards delivering a complete game in a controlled and planned way!

If you are interested in seeing my progress, the project can be found here.