Austin Roorda

Studying abroad in Montreal was fantastic. I would definitely say it's probably the highlight of my time here at Champlain in many ways. I worked as a Project Manager Intern at Behavior Interactive on their mobile division. I worked on an unreleased game, which is currently still in development, called Game of Thrones Beyond The Wall. I worked on that as a Project Manager, tracking tasks, and being a facilitator of discussion and communication between the team. I was also just a person of contact and point of reference for pretty much any questions the team had. I'd get them to talk to who they needed to.

For getting things done as a Producer and Project Manager,  you have a bunch of task tracking software and communication facilitators such as Matter Most or Discord. I've found food is extremely effective. Being able to sit people down at a work session and say, "Hey, I brought food. Please eat this food and then do those things that we said that we should probably do to make sure that we actually don't crunch." Super effective. Also, having a smile and a pleasant disposition is pretty good, too.

So I'm Scrum certified, which means that I've been certified as a Scrum master through Clint Keith and the Scrum Alliance. And that basically means that I can facilitate team progress and a team workflow by making it so we reevaluate and iterate whatever we're making on a week-by-week basis or a case-by-case, sprint-by-sprint basis. That just allows us to be more efficient in what we're making. And it's a better way than just doing it the traditional old fashioned way from start to end.