I believe all of us have a goal to achieve in life. but sometimes it just feels hard to achieve and we do not know where we should start.
I want to develop and publish my own games but as time pass, I feel pretty lazy, tired especially after work. I usually work on my games in my free times.
Last year, my senior told me about Smart Framework, I read about it but I failed to really understand it. Because the article I read that time is not pretty clear and to the point for me. But today in the meeting we talk about Smart Framework and I got more understanding of that framework.
Smart stands for Specific, Measureable, Accountable, Realistic, Time-bound.
Specific
The key here is to define the What (Output, Outcome, Expected Result) and How to achieve it.
When developed an educational game for an educational game portal, the output I expected from the game was playable and ready to be submitted into the portal to be reviewed.
How I can achieve this? I will work on the game programming and the game design and art I will ask my friend to work on it. And for the sounds, we will search free to use for commercial audio.
Measurable
The key here is defining how to measure progress, the definition of done and acceptance criteria.
The definition of done from my game is when I have a playable game so I can submit my game.
Since I made this game for an educational portal, the acceptance criteria will be when my game is accepted and it performs well in that portal and generate a good amount of revenue.
And I separate the game into a smaller milestone, prototype, MVP, test, release to help me measure the progress.
Accountable
The key here is to define to whom you can delegate the goal.
You can delegate it not only to a person but to third-party services or other things too that can help you achieve your goal.
e.g when you need analytics in your game, you can use firebase analytics. Or you need history references for your history games, you can buy a history book or ask your friends that love history.
In my game, I responsible for game programming.
Game design and art will be my friends.
The game audio will be free for commercial use audio.
Realistic
The key here is making your goal align with your time and resources.
You should understand, how much time and resources do you have.
When I worked on my educational game, my resources are 2 people with a time of 3 months. I worked on the programming while my friends in art and design. Since we only have 3 months to finish the game and I only work on it in my free time, we make the game scope smaller and pick the easiest mechanics we can implement.
The end product is considered mini-games since there is not much gameplay there. If we want to add more content or make a bigger game we will need more time or more people to work on it.
When you have a friend that working full time on his casual game and takes 3 month to finish it. You need to allocate more time when you work on a similar casual game but in your free time. A similar game scope can take different times to achieve depending on resources and time.
Time-Bound
The key here is set the deadline for you goal.
You should give a deadline to your goal, to keep you stay motivated and you can understand if this goal is possible or not with current time-bound. So you can adjust your resources, time and the goal itself.
In my games, we use the deadline from the game portal that is 3 months to work on the game, make the scope small enough so you can finish it on time.
Thank you for reading this far, you are awesome.
I hope it will helpful for you.
Have a nice day :)