LMXT Interactive

In the summer of 2022 I worked for Lockheed Martin at the Aeronautics headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. I was a visual communications intern primarily working with the 3D Interactive team supporting business communications. The 3D Interactive team at LM Aero is basically a small game development team. The team is responsible for creating most of the 3D renders that Aero Communications use as well as all the interactive products for Aero and occasionally other business areas. The LMXT Interactive Demo is a project the team created to showcase the new LMXT strategic tanker. The interactive allows the user to pan around the plane, change the configuration of refueling fighters, and open up and focus on various parts of the plane that have important features and descriptions.

I primarily worked with the visual communications department as a project management consultant. I hold certification in Disciplined Agile and two years of experience managing a team that employs Agile techniques. The visual communications department, especially the interactive media team, was very interested in bringing my skills to the work process. I worked closely with the interactive team in Unreal Engine 5 developing an audio system for the LMXT demo, which gave me first-hand experience of the general production process from a creator's perspective. During this, I took careful notes of how the team worked together, which communication channels were used, how the project was organized, how tasks were tracked, and more. From this, I created a detailed report reviewing the team’s process and included an assessment of where I thought the team was doing great and a critique on inefficiencies in the context of the LMXT demo. I paired this report with a half-hour presentation on Disciplined Agile and how this methodology could be applied to the team.

The report and presentation I made resonated with the team. The team manager and team creative lead were both impressed and liked many of the suggestions I made. My manager thought the work was useful enough that I repeated my presentation for the web development team and the team of project managers that distribute across the whole visual communications department. During the time I was there the interactive media team made changes to their work process that directly reflected suggestions from my report and presentation. I worked closely with the manager and team members every day to help implement the suggestions I gave and curate a unique work system that the team could use to work better together.

One of the challenges in the work I was doing, as with all transformations, in helping the team make this transition was that some team members were resistant to change. Some members were content with the current way of working and did not initially see the benefit of the new processes. I worked hard to empathize with these team members and understand why they did not want to change their process. By talking one-on-one I was able to identify what parts of the new process did not immediately mesh with them, and either reframe the process in a way they accepted or work with them and the manager to find a solution that was optimal.