Developing a New Major

lots of team members will be young, not have a lot of experience as employees or as team members or as professionals

producer

• as the team manager has to do on the job training on some basic work skills
• have to keep lines of communication open so you can hear about and address problems
• have to get a lot of different groups of people with different skills nad goals to respect and talk to each other
• leader’s job is to appreciate and inspire the team – not about the importance of hte leader
• actions -not talk- make you a leader
• you have to hold people accountable for hteir work and help them get back on track
• gotta like people
• you’re the champion of hte team to management
• there are different leadership styles and you will move in and out of the different styles depending ont eh situation – have to be more directi8ve with new employees, can be more participative as the employees get more skilled — takes time for you to develop skills in the different leaderships styles and to get comfortable moving between them

leads

• are basically managers, not content creators so don’t take your best artist just because he’s your best artist and make him the lead because you lose out on his art skills and they’re not necessarily a good manager
• lead needs to be able to communicate with lots of other tpes of non-technical people so need good people skills, need project management skills, need skills of hte team they’re leading so they’ll be respected by the team and to be ble to advice the producer on the team’s progreass
• gotta make sure lead doens’t go off on a power trip
• being a lead is a service role in the team, they’re responsible to hte team
• leads stay in place for hte whole porject, as team grows might assign a sublead role in some specialty groups

team building

long game development time means the team core is together a long time

as team grows you have to make sure everyone knows everyone else – intro new people around

make sure people know what they’re supposed to be doing, who they report to, who’s in charge of what aspects of hte project – - this will increase efficiency and morale

have job descriptions especially for new positions on the team so everyone knows what they’re supposed to do

cross training the leads – when you have down time – give the leads more respect for what others don ont he team, also really good for new employees to get the big picture, good for people who think they want to work on another part of hte team – shadowing, spend time in the departments, rotate people across departments

space organization

• 2 methods – seat by discipline so you have people wiht similar skills nearby to discuss problems iwth OR seat by what part of hte game they’re working on – everyone working on UI sit together, or put the character artists with the texturers and animators so they can talk about their part of the project
• offices vs cubes vs bullpens vs flexible open space – need space for private discussion and space for small group meetings, regardless of hte overall space layout

team meetings – keep focused and as short as possible, important to do regularly but not necessarily every week, good for discussing changes so you address concerns earlier rather than later

team wiki

keep all documentation, meeting minutes, handy references

still email around critical stuff, but wiki or websit is good for day to day stuff

it’s a place for people to collaborate and discuss

migth put up a team directory with photos, how to pronounce names, personal blurb (look at that article about the guild websites)

by the time you start to see warning signs of low morale, problem is probably huge, might have personal problems, might be pissed off about something on the project and they stop working hard – gotta address problems right away

sometimes people get burned out – need to find a way to change things up for them

everyting goes back to having build up strong communication lines in the group, int he team, int he company – don’t take hearsay as proof – gotta talk to al lthe people involved

show appreciation – buy snacks or lunch occasionally, celebrate birthdays with a cake

ties in the the company’s quality of life – people want different things from a job at different stages of life — (check out the quality of life sig at igda)

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