Developing a New Major

ch3 in textbook

good to know formal methods and be aware of what’s going on in general in the business world – saves time in the long run

project management techniques help ya with the resources-features-schedule triangle – remember to develop a quality product – if you increase 1 usually you have to change the schedule/get more money or cut features or reduce quality

goal isn’t to make projects more corporate – but it might get more buy-in from the publishers – the suits – and keep them away because they can see what’s going on in the project and that the producer is on top of things

gotta educate team, implement big important stuff first to get buy in, could start small to get big impact like take notes at meetings and mail them around with action items for discussion

project management clearly points out problems with the project – like employees not hitting deadlines and that makes people nervous

not everyone is going to be excited/happy about introducing/using product management methods

• some people will be afraid it will stifle creativity or that it will remove them more from decision making
• it can involve some upfront costs – training, time away from wrok, someone to manage the process
• not suited for all game development tasks – doesn’t work so good with art resoruce development or some of the straight design tasks

but there are benefits to using them

• people get more time for creatvie development and prototyping because they’re not spending all their time putting out fires
• easy to bring in new team members and easy for them to get up to speed and see what they’re supposed to be doing
• get data for estimating time on similar tasks in the future – so can plan better, budget better
• makes people more confident in the games success
• metrics being collected – like Scrum’s burn down charts – let the team see how they’re doing, whether they’re behind or ahead of schedule
• team has to be involved in deciding what tasks to do and when – great team involvement and buy-in

hopefully using some of these techniques will help yu forestall a lot of problems

constraints (in time and resources as well as in story) make people more creative

there’s a project management institute – there is standard terminology for management

project management lets you collect and track statistics for better future planning

with good project management it’s easier to bring in new people – process in place, tasks listed, documentation available

some project management tech good for engineering tasks – like scrum and agile – can be useful to do agile in just the one area because it’s hard to manage otherwise

takes training to learn to use the techniuqes – that takes time and money that has to be planned for

(case studies int he text book about project management technique use

other project management techniques

waterfall

• used by defense industry engineers in the 60s and 70s to reduce project failures
• phased implementation of design, codig, integration then testing
• even ths simple use of iterative design reduced failures a lot

PSP/TSP (personal software process mostly just for engineers/team software process for when everybody on the team is gona try to implement it)

• created at CMU
• personal/team software process
• from carnegie mellon, for software engineers
• focused on code quality, how to plan, how to catch bugs earlier
• requires everyone go to 2 week training course simultaneously
• code reviews at every stage
• engineers commit to fewer bugs, better time estimates
• saves money in that code more stable, more efficiently produced
• TSP ’s goal = build more involved teams, more motivated teams who can complete more aggressive projects successfully on time and budget because they were involved iwth creating the  schedule
• TSP – whole team meets for 4 days to create the project plan and task list – concentrated focused chunk o’ time and with the team involved tasks are less likely to be forgotten
• takes a lot of time to do right – have to collect a lot of data – how much time each task is taking on a daily basis (that can weird people out if htey think they’re going to be evaluated on those numbers
• data collection and evaluation can hurt buy in so have to think how you’re going to sell it

scrum

• for about the last 5 years it’s really caught on in the game industry, it’s a kind of agile method, HIgh Moon Studios ws one of hte first to use it
• iteration and feedback – always have a working version of the game so start with core features and then add on – test and fix as you go
• focused on management principles, not engineering
• biggest pro – team morale improvements – people are enthusiastic, take ownership of their tasks, have direct control of what htey are doing, and because they “own” the tasks they’re more likely to work to get rid of problems instead of waiting for managemetn to do it
• flexible and relatively easy to start using
• “design, implement, integrate, debug, tune vertical slices as you go” instead of dividing project up into phases for each step
• self-directed cross functional teams working on game features, create their own prioritized task list, set up milestones called sprints (30 days, 2 wekeks, epends on the project length)
• scrum master on each team reports back to management/leads/producer
• scrum master has to have the power to deal with anything that gets in the team’s way
• any one employee might be on several teams at once – producer needs to make sure people aren’t spread too thng
• have something playable at the end of each sprint
• vertical slices of work – do all at once – art, design, engineering tasks – to get playable version sooner
• 5-7 people per scrum is a good size – multi-discipline teams working on a game chunk that gets put into the playable game at the end of the spring
• Mass Effect developed using scrum
• Bioware used it a lot for parts of BioShock
• don’t lock your features in for each scrum – some stuff from scrum 1 might not get finished and get pushed back – just lock in the time length of the scrum
• burn down charts posted so everyone can see – everyone can see the daily progress of hte team, shows how much time each task still needs to be finished
• important parts of hte game get finished earlier so chunks can be playable – get polished over time or features get added to the core
• as the gameplay emerges team can react right away – maybe some features get cut from the list because they don’t fit anymore
• idea is not to create a 500 page design document – goal is to build working prototypes, playable chunks, that show off the key features
• publishers like it eventually – they get to see early and often what the game is looking – “publishers may be reluctant to buy into this development process at first, since they need to be educated that writing huge design documetns and creating a MS Project schedule nly gives the illusion of control. Scrum actually gives more control to the process since a tangible deliverable must be ready every 30 days which gives a more accurate picture of the progress” p. 49
• another big pro – you can see that overtime for more than a couple of days actually reduces productivity so can schedule small bursts of overtime when needed to hit a deadline instead of making it go on and on and on
• 15 minute daily scrum meetings to get rid om impediments dramatically increased productivity
• only good for projects wth uncertainty – if you know everything about a project – like an expansino pack-  then use traditional methods because you realy can with certainty lay out in a MS Project sheet the schedule and show management you’re on track for hte delivery date
• using scrum does not mean you don’t do proper prior planning – you still have to scope out hte project’s boundaries, you still have to reevaluate the project occasionally and make sure any changes are communicated with hte team
• another con – make sure things do’nt ust build oup on the backlog – “this bit me badly on my 2nd scrum projuect when every single item in the original backlog was replaced by another “higher priority” request. I didn’t clearly communicate that this impacted the deadlne of hteh original requests and consequently they would not be completed by the original deadline. As each item got superseded, i tried to convey its individual impact, but since deprioritized items tend to just sink n the product backlog instead of being axed, upper management assumed they would all still get done” (p. 51)
• don’t use it for repetitive tasks – if an artist needs to make 300 animations doesn’t help to have a multi-function team around them (maybe another animator but don’t need sound  and design guys)
• the one con interview says “There are many things you can use in scrum that are great, but the interdisciplinary nature of a group is less important when you are in full productiona dn people are working on actual game assets” p. 51

PMP – project management professional – certication

• from the project management institute
• used in lots of industries, not just game design
• no 2 projects are exactly alike, consult the project management book of knowledge for appropriate techniques
• they give out a pmp certificate
• continuing ed required at home
• their goal is to standardize project management methods across industries
• standard methods that investors and publishers and developers can all understand
• for every project pmp recommends having a quality management lpan -regardless is using iteratve development or waterfall, ya need a qulaity plan to have a successfull game – can be a simple plan – everyone plays the game for an hour and day and reports their findings or could be elaborate testplans
• 5 process groups – initiating, planning, executing, controlling, monitoring, closing – - every project goes thru these 5 steps – details on p. 54-55
• 7 knowledge areas – scope management, time managemetn, cost management, quality management, human resources, management, project communication management, risk management – details on p. 55-57

sometimes you have to educate the publisher about developing projet management methods tho they are starting to see the benefits of these formal methods so it’s not as difficult now as in the past

project reviews

• montly/periodic full project reviews with producers and management and any other important stakeholders – regular contact is good
• forces producers to stay up to date on big project goals and on project progress
• works best if management says exactly what htey’re interested in seeing so you can prepare
• make action items out of the discussion and follow up wiht team and management on a timely basis
• partially CYA – you let htem know about any potential risks or scheduling problems
• producer shoule set these up on a regular basis – producer has to be proactive
• give attendees updated schedule, ask for any additional needed resources

critical stage analysis

• a monthly/perioidc post mortem during production phse – what’s gone right/wrong/what we need to change
• everyone answers
• lead ranks the master list, selcts the highest priority ones to address or say why it can’t be dealt with now and reports the results back to the team

status reports

• weekly report of current status of your part of the project
• include informatin useful to intended audience

Meetings

• have time limits and stick to subject on teh agenda (which you’ve sent out before hand)
• people have roles – lead/moderator, time keeper, note taker/secretary
• take notes/minutes and share with team afterwards and follow up on action items
• some companies have a specific meeting note template they use

resource allocation

• be ready to move people around if you know what skills they have and they have down time during a project or borrow people from other projects (maybe something in preproduction)

feature creep

• have people fill out change requests and them justify any request to add features
• reprioritize features if you decide to add any that have been requested
• a lot of companies don’t have any approval process set up for their change requests – gotta have and everyone needs to know nad folow it
• producer and associate producers are responsible for moving hte process along and updating everyone
• get approval before starting work on a feature
• helps to have specific resources assigned for each task and make sure there are approved tasks where needed
• have one point of contact so there’s one user who knows what’s been approved or not (and they update schedule

strike force

• like a scrum team but less formal
• multi-disciplinary team
• evaluate a specific problem and come back with proposed solutions
• there’s a team leader who has a specifc charge and deadline
• everyone agrees that they’ll go with what the strike team suggests

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Business, Management, Project management, Scrum, Software development process