Responsibilities
- People management
- Project management
- Business strategy
- Data analysis
- User research and interviews
Results
- Investment fundraising target met in the first round with investors
- MVP delivered on time, according to our roadmap
- Structured team with 74% increased productivity
- Fluid and effective communication
The project
The Sp4ce Games (now known as Trexx) is a startup focused on e-sports and blockchain gaming, aiming to popularize Web 3 through games.
My job was to structure and manage a team capable of developing an indie game, as well as defining our roadmap, sprints, features, and facilitating investment fundraising.
Challenges
I talked to the CEO of Sp4ce and its partners to understand the startup’s objectives, its current situation, and the issues blocking its progress. After analyzing the information, it was possible to define the hurdles that we needed to overcome:
Undefined Priorities: We were at the beginning of the project and aimed to deliver a blockchain game, but we lacked a clear vision of what features the game should have, a defined roadmap, and an assessment of project risks.
Internal Communication: The team didn’t have an official means of communication (conversations took place on the team’s personal WhatsApp), resulting in information loss and posing a risk to the mental health of the collaborators, as there was no clear separation between personal and professional life. Additionally, there was no feedback process, leading to noise and preventing the team from evolving and correcting errors that were hindering or slowing down the project development.
Need for investiment: To ensure the project’s swift development, we needed initial investment to hire more professionals. To achieve this, we needed to create a document outlining our project, growth strategies, roadmap, and financial planning (distribution of tokens generated on the blockchain, costs, and pricing strategy), as well as conduct meetings with investors and generate monthly reports for partners who had already invested.
Understanding the business and team
I aimed to deeply understand how the planned business model functioned and what brought profit and expenses to the company, in order to measure these inputs and outputs.
After talking to the directors, I individually spoke with all team members to get to know each one better and identify their expectations regarding the project and the company, as well as to pinpoint the main obstacles in their daily work.
Identifying risks and opportunities
Proposed conducting a workshop with everyone to uncover as many challenges, questions, and ideas that could assist the business.
To achieve this, I utilized an ideation framework called “Six Thinking Hats“. In this dynamic, we divided the team into 6 groups, each with a different persona type that should view the product from a different perspective, prompting the team to move away from preconceived ideas and generating new insights.
After this dynamic, we grouped the risks and opportunities and aligned them in a priority matrix. Considering the impact that each point offered to our business and the speed of developing a solution.
Defining our target audience
We conducted research in blockchain gaming communities to understand our target audience, which would help us define which features we needed to build and how our product would evolve.
We sought to understand the players’ interests, the types of games they enjoyed, their age, level of technological knowledge, and what they believed worked or didn’t work in the games already on the market. Here we found 3 profiles:
Speculators: view blockchain games as an investment opportunity and are not as concerned about gameplay. Financial return comes first.
Pro-players: love games and want to make a living from them. Gameplay and community are extremely important, but they also seek a good financial return. They are competitive and want to be the best players in the matches.
Fans: Love the game and want to have fun and collect rare NFTs. Although they like the idea of making money with their favorite game, they consider it a secondary thing and focus on enjoying the gameplay and the community surrounding the game.
Market and users deepdive
I proposed a deep dive into the market to analyze other games that were being developed or already in production, as well as analogous markets that could serve as inspiration.
We tried to understand what each one did right and what the communities/players of these games said about them, focusing on the things that didn’t work, as they could be points we needed to keep an eye on in our project.
Defining the game features
After having a clearer vision of the product, we mapped out all the features we wanted to develop. Nothing we defined here would be set in stone, as what would ultimately enter the final project would be determined by the users and our metrics.
This future vision would allow us to build a more cohesive game and serve as an initial guide. We broke down the features into: gameplay, blockchain (everything needed for the crypto economy to function), and community (player management and game events).
Roadmap and MVP definition
Alongside the team, we defined a roadmap for our project. We talked to everyone to understand the difficulties and potential risks in order to generate a realistic time estimate for each feature.
In the roadmap, we also defined what would be developed for the Pre-Alpha version, our MVP. We selected the features that we planned to be truly essential to bring a complete experience that would please our users in the shortest time possible.
Defining team processes
Alongside project definitions, we also needed to organize processes for high performance. To achieve this, I proposed some changes:
Implementing the Agile Model
To accelerate project delivery and adapt quickly, I proposed using the agile methodology.
Intense collaboration between the team and our audience resulted in greater clarity on the features we needed to develop. Focusing on quality reduced risks and increased team efficiency, leading to faster deliveries and avoiding rework.
Improving communication
To ensure clear information and decision-making without interference, I implemented some changes in how we organized our knowledge and communicated.
We defined a new way of communicating within the company, using Discord. By abandoning WhatsApp as a means of communication, we removed the risk of mixing the team’s personal and professional lives, and now we would have a history and focused channels, avoiding wasting employees’ time with subjects they didn’t need to participate in.
We created a company Wiki, containing all our processes and learnings, allowing information to be passed asynchronously, making life easier for new team members who joined.
Feedback culture
To propose improvements and address errors in a peaceful manner while ensuring everyone was heard, we began holding meetings at the end of each sprint with the focus of highlighting what went well and identifying and proposing solutions for what did not go well.
I conducted periodic 1:1s with all team members and encouraged everyone to hold these meetings among themselves, in order to track concerns, expectations, and jointly seek ways to evolve our work and create a healthier work environment.
Results
Investment goal achieved
With a solid roadmap and progressing as planned, we managed to meet the goal we had set in the first round of investments. Some investors increased their initial investment after seeing the project’s progress.
Productivity growth and structured team
We were able to structure a complete product team with developers, game designers, illustrators, writers, and 3D artists.
Through incremental deliveries and continuous feedback, we managed to evolve 74% faster (according to the initial throughput).
MVP Delivered
After 7 months, we successfully delivered our MVP on time, enabling us to seek new investors, participate in events, and open the testing phase, helping us to continue collecting feedback and evolving.
Next steps
Community feedback
With a community of players and fans of the project, we needed to maintain close contact with our players to increase the hype around the launch, as well as gather as much feedback as possible so that our game could meet the expectations created during the production process.
New features
Focusing on the expectations and desires of our community, new features needed to continue entering our roadmap, always ensuring to maintain a viable release timeline.
Team growth
After the first phase of investments, we were able to expand our team, but we still needed more experienced employees to continue evolving. To achieve this, we needed to find the right talents, as well as ensure that we could maintain clear communication and information for everyone and uphold a healthy corporate culture.
Heading towards launch
Even after delivering the Alpha version of our game, we had a long way to go until the launch. We would need the help of everyone on our team and focused leadership. Transparent and constant communication would be necessary.
Think I can help?
Let's talk!
leandro.mont@outlook.com.br
+55 (11) 98486-1888