Meeting Descriptions

Throughout the summer, there will be several meetings that serve a variety of purposes.

Daily Stand-Up Meetings

These meetings, occurring every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 9:30am, serve to assemble the team and ensure work is aligned across team members. Each team member should share:

• What they did during the previous day of work
• What they plan to do today
• What roadblocks they currently face or questions they currently have

Bi-Weekly Checkpoint Meetings

These meetings, occurring every other Thursday from 3-4pm, serve as a checkpoint between the two-week blocks known as sprints. There are three parts crammed into one meeting:

Retrospective

The team discusses the previous two weeks, and considers things that may improve their experience and effectiveness during the next two weeks.

Demo

The team demonstrates their completed work from the previous two weeks.

Planning

The team looks ahead and decides which issues to attack during the next two weeks.

Project Introduction

6/18 from 1:30-3pm

This meeting is intended to introduce the internship as a whole, including:

• This website
• These meetings
• Team processes & roles
• Issue tracking
• Programming methods
• Project details
• Learning resources
• First week goals

By the end of this meeting, interns should have a solid plan in place for work for the rest of the day and the next two days as well.

Game Design Discussion

6/20 from 11am-12pm

This meeting will give the team a chance to talk through the overall plan for the design of the game. Hopefully, there will be a general idea of the featureset and gameplay by this point - but the interns will have the opportunity to influence the ultimate direction of the project.

Code Walkthrough

6/25 from 1-2pm

The purpose of this meeting is to explain the many facets of the AUTOHACK IDLE codebase at a high level. Up to this point, the interns may have been able to explore the codebase (and should have even updated it), but this will provide more context and background. Hopefully at this point they also have a relative familiarity with the technologies used in the project.

UX Reviews

6/26 from 11am-12pm
7/24 from 11am-12pm

These meetings are meant to give interns an opportunity to think critically about the user experience of the application they are building. During the first instance, they should learn a bit about UX and its importance. From there, they should review the current state of the app, and discuss potential improvements (including wireframing new features if needed).

Playtesting

These meetings are a chance for the interns to play the game, and see how it feels in its current state. They should take note of the overall playing experience, look out for bugs, and discuss potential improvements.

One important piece of this may be to "mock" different gameplay checkpoints - for instance, it may be worth simulating a "10 hours in" game, a "40 hours in" game, etc. This will help test the long-term experience of the game.

Branding Discussion

This meeting will allow interns to consider the branding implications of the game. This is an opportunity for them to think a bit about the business/marketing side of software, as well as make decisions about the future work.

For this project, the goal of a solid brand identity is to ensure a cohesive gameplay experience and presence. This identity can help guide decision-making around the features, theming, and overall direction of the game.

Board Maintenance

These meetings allow interns to clean up the GitHub Issues board. They should prune out-of-date issues, ensure all completed issues are moved to the proper place, organize the backlog in priority order, and do anything else to make the board nice.

This time will also be an opportunity for interns to blue sky brainstorm potential new features. Optimally, the board should always contain more issues in the backlog than can be completed within one sprint - but each issue should be feasible within one sprint.

Midsummer Demo

This meeting gives the team an opportunity to showcase the work they have completed thus far. It should encourage them to present a "complete" (MVP) version of their product. The main goal of the midsummer demo is to help them prepare for the final demo.

Stakeholders may be invited to the midsummer demo, but it should be a comfortable environment for the interns to practice presenting and show what they have.

H2 Planning

This meeting gives the interns a chance to think more long-term about the work that lies ahead. They should try to think about what they'd like to accomplish by the end of the internship, given their present state. Ideally, they have a well-scoped plan of issues to complete during the latter half of the summer by the end of the meeting.

Final Presentation Preparation

The intern team can use this time to start putting together some slides.

As a group, the team should share:

• An explanation of the game – its purpose and basic functionality
• The processes the team followed to work together (things like stand-ups, planning, UX design, Kanban)
• How the team leveraged different technologies to work on the project (things like Git, TypeScript, React)

Individuals should share:

• Their background (school, grade, programming experience)
• What they learned throughout the internship
• How this internship impacted them
• Their favorite part of the internship

This presentation should culminate in a demonstration of the current version of the game (deployed on Render so that attendees can play it for themselves). After that, the team can:

• Discuss their future vision for the game
• Share any closing thoughts about their experience
• Ask if anyone has any questions

If needed, refer to the slides from last summer.

Final Demo

This presentation will be the "end" of the internship. The team should present what they built, talk about what they learned, and share any relevant insights about their experience.

Depending on the quality of the midsummer demo, it may be beneficial to invite leaders and/or executives to this final demo.