FINAL EVALUATION
Post Mortem
Introduction
During this project I have enjoyed moments and I have also not enjoyed moments. It is important to me in both my pre-mortem and this post mortem to identify issues that I had throughout so that I can prevent them and their issues from affecting me in the future. I was right in my pre-mortem with a lot of issues that hit me however they hit me in ways that I didn't plan for and wasn't expecting. I will use this post mortem in projects going forward so that the same mistakes are not made again.
Lack of motivation
Throughout this project there have been many instances where I have had negative feelings such as lack of motivation. In my pre-mortem I highlighted that this could be due to the fact that I didn't feel like I was making any progress towards the final goal, in actual fact I felt this way because I wasn't enjoying the tasks which were being set, however I knew they were a requirement in order to pass. This was an issue as it resulted in some of the work stacking up and therefore causing me significant amounts of stress in order to get it done. Moving forward into other projects I feel it is important to cover and mitigate all of these areas of negativity at the start. One way I could have done that in this project is by ensuring at the end of a week that all of the work up until that point is done, so that when I move on into the next week I have a clean slate ready to start the new tasks. I have learnt as a result that I should take more care in my time management and ensure I leave myself enough time to complete all tasks within the allotted time frame.
Feelings of repetitiveness
Throughout the project there were many instances where tasks felt similar if not identical when it came to the meaning behind them, for example for me i felt that my one minute game review and my game review presentation video achieved the exact same goal except for one had my face in it and one didn't. I am sure that there was more of a reason for both of these tasks however at the time in the midst of my negativity it was hard to find the positivity and get all of the tasks done within the week that they were set. This was an issue as it resulted in me personally feeling unhappy a lot throughout the course of this project and that is something that I wanted to try and avoid at all costs when planning out the start of this project. Moving forward it is important to me that I find positives in all situations so that I am happier as a person but also so that my work quality can be improved even more allowing me the best chance at success when it comes to the final major project.
Thoughts to words
When writing a lot of large text based tasks it is often difficult for me to put some of what i am wanting to say in my head into words on the screen. In my pre-mortem I identified this as a possible issue that would occur and I was correct. The strategy which I had outlined in order to combat this issue from happening wasnt always effective at times as it resulted in a lot of extra work when completing each task. As I have covered in some of the other issues in this post mortem, time wasn't exactly on my side throughout this project so the adding of additional non essential tasks was something that I struggled with. As a result I only ended up sticking to these plans half of the time which meant that I encountered this issue. This could have negatively affected my overall outcome if I hadn't taken extra care in ensuring that everything I was required to say was there and also everything I wanted to add was there too. Going forward I already know exactly what I need to do to prevent this from happening again as I covered it in my pre-mortem, however next time I need to tie it in with time management to ensure that I can actually complete it all.
Organisation
Throughout this project I identified an issue that would arise as a result of poor organisation. The plans that I set out in my pre-mortem were targeted at the organisation of my work such as files on a computer. This strategy that I had outlined to combat this worked absolutely fine however the issue that I failed to plan for and address was time organisation. There were multiple instances throughout the course of this project where I had failed to leave myself enough time to complete a task within my own allotted time frame or that I had left a piece of work all together and caused it to add to the work pile. This meant that when it came to actually completing this work I also had additional stuff that needed to be done as well. This was an issue as it caused me a significant amount of stress and upset. It is important for me moving forward that I ensure I complete all of the tasks within a reasonable amount of time and therefore do not allow them to add up to the end. I will take strict care in ensuring that plans are made to prevent this from happening as I would not like a repeat of some of the feelings I felt in this project next time.
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Conclusion
Moving forward when doing my plans and pre-mortems I need to ensure that I am planning for all possible problems within an area so that issues such as my time organisation does not occur again. The issue that i had in this project was that i hadn't thought about every different line an issue could take to affect me negatively. If I do this correctly it will give me a much more positive feeling and outcome when completing future work and hopefully this will naturally boost its quality as I progress through.
Games Journalism Final Evaluation
Introduction
Throughout the course of this project I have felt a lot of emotions both positive and negative however I feel that overall my work ethic and quality has improved in comparison to other projects. I have enjoyed learning about the rights and wrongs of journalism and therefore learning the skills necessary to create work of my own within that area. There are however areas of improvement still and that is what I will continue to identify as I work. It's important to use this in combination with my other evaluation work such as the post mortem to ensure that I can become the best version of myself as well as creating the best work.
Context Stage
A lot of the tasks within this stage of the project were all regarding analysing other work released by people on similar topics to that of which we would be covering. This was really beneficial for me when starting the project as it allowed me to generate ideas and expectations for myself in preparation for when we started looking into how we would create our own work. Next time I come to do this I feel that on a few occasions I could have looked more deeply into certain areas as it will leave me more prepared. However these are the kinds of things that you will struggle to identify until afterwards which is why I feel it is so important to talk about it here .. Overall this stage went well and was one of the most beneficial to my overall outcomes and grade, there are of course improvements to be made however i will use all of the resources available to me to help make this happen.
Research Stage
In most projects that we have done so far, the research stage is my favourite of all as it allows you to sit down and really look into the small details behind all of the questions that you have. I feel that some of the mistakes I have made in this stage previously have often put me off, however this time I ensured that I had plans put in place to prevent these mistakes from happening again. I noticed a dramatic increase in quality of work and also a significant shortening of the amount of time it took to complete the tasks. I achieved this step by step by planning the headings of everything I wanted to talk about so that when it came to writing my thoughts and findings on that specific area, all I had to do was read what I had written as the title and expand on that. This was beneficial to me as it prevented me from having to generate ideas on the go and therefore improved the quality of the ideas and also cut down on the time it took to come up with them. Overall I feel that this stage went well and I had managed to suitably solve a problem which I had identified and come out better on the other side as a result.
Planning Stage
In this project the planning stage was very much the supporting tasks for all of the bigger areas of work. Things such as the idea generation plan and our project proposal are all key documents which benefited me in creating my final outcomes. I will be the first to admit that usually I overlook this area of projects as I failed to see the importance of it, however when telling myself at the start of this project that I wanted to do better by myself and improve my quality of workI had to identify the importance of each stage of the project. After taking this stage more seriously in this project I can see an improvement in my overall work as the foundations were there to a good quality so that I only had to expand on that as a result. I am really happy with my planning stage in this project as I feel that the amount of work and effort I put into it was actually evident. Overall I feel that I have done really well in identifying that this stage was a lacking area in some of my other projects and as a result improving it here in order to keep within my aim of improving.
Experimentation Stage
In this project it was important for me to ensure that I was testing and experimenting with all of the ideas I wanted to pursue. This is because everything in this project is new to me. I feel in this project it has reassured me on a few occasions that what I was planning on doing would work out and also has prevented me from making some mistakes by identifying that an idea I had doesn't exactly work as I thought it would etc. I am really happy overall with how this stage of the project went and therefore how it positively benefited me. It was important to me at the start of this project that I would use each stage to the best of its ability so that I could benefit the most from it and do as well as I could. There are definitely areas of improvement in this stage however such as the fact that i could have reflected more on some areas of decision making etc however i am satisfied with what i managed to achieve and can tell that there is a difference in progress in comparison to the last few projects when i actually utilise this stage to help me.
Final Outcomes
My final outcomes in this project, I feel, were a really good sum up of all the work I had put in throughout all of the other stages in order to make this happen. My magazine especially received some fantastic and positive feedback which made me feel that what I had managed to create and achieve was something to be proud of. With everything in these projects there are of course areas of improvement such as the fact that I could have included a bit more editing in my video however I feel that what was included in the video adequately got across the message that I wanted it to. Some of the new methods which i trialled in this project and ended up subsequently using in the final outcomes are something that i feel worked really well, as a result i am going to be taking these and using them in future projects to ensure that i reap the positive results of my steady progress to creating the best final major project that i can. Overall I feel that my final outcomes were really good and I am happy with how they turned out. I liked that they aligned with the consistency in terms of quality with the rest of my supporting work.
Conclusion
In conclusion I feel that this project was really beneficial and positive overall, it has taught me things which I can use in my future endeavours and projects and has also been a massive learning curve and step in the right direction with regards to the upwards gradient of the quality of my work. I am really proud of what i managed to achieve and hope that i can continue this quality and personal development into the next project, it has been really satisfying to me seeing the genuine slope of improvement as i worked my way through this project and i feel that it was one of the major things which kept me working through at the pace i did. I also feel that my dedication throughout the project to identifying problems and therefore solving them is something that I should be proud of myself for as it shows a real change in how I was in past projects.
Evidence Of Problem Solving
One of the major issues that i encountered towards the end of this project was that i needed to complete a few tasks over the course of a weekend which required Adobe Premiere Pro to complete.
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I combatted this issue by first trying to contact the tech support team at college, when they were unable to help until the following week (past when i need to do the work) i decided i needed to move around some of the order in which i would be completing the tasks.
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Therefore instead of doing the premiere tasks on the weekend and the last 2 written tasks on the Monday i decided to do the written tasks over the weekend and left the premiere tasks until i was physically in college where i had access to the relevent software.