New School Blues Dev. Diary #11: Milestone Schedule

Developer Diary #11: Milestone Scheduling

Hey guys, Mike here again.  This week I’ll talk a bit about the actual schedule, specifically how we created it and what milestones were set and why, starting with the online submission process.

For scheduling, we used a popular strategy known as “workback” scheduling.  Essentially you start with your final deadline -  the point of no return.  In our case that date is December 14th, 2012.  Then we basically work back from that date one step a time to see what we need to have done and when.

For example, we knew that in order for people to play our game, we’d need to submit to an online portal or game site.  Those sites don’t just immediately put your game up though, there are submission processes and approval takes time.  Submitting things for iOS is a similar process.  Knowing that, we set a couple weeks buffer entirely devoted to getting the game online and ready before the 14th of December.  So in reality, we actually need to have the game done on November 30th!

You might think two weeks is too long for just this one process, but since things can go wrong, we’ll be using that time to fix the game in case it doesn’t meet submission specifications for whatever reason.  Also should issues appear that delay progress and we are off schedule, we’ll have a buffer to complete things and still get it out on time for the 14th.  Finally those two weeks will also be used to get the word out about the game, so even if submission goes without a hitch, that time will still be used productively.

The workback schedule continues in my next post!  So we’ve scheduled the submission process, but what comes before that?  See you next time to find out.