Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
March 18, 2024, 08:22:47 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Search:     Advanced search
we're back, baby
*
Home Help Search Login Register
f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  News  |  Topic: Interview with Scott Jennings 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Pages: 1 [2] Go Down Print
Author Topic: Interview with Scott Jennings  (Read 58465 times)
schild
Administrator
Posts: 60345


WWW
Reply #35 on: August 21, 2008, 09:22:15 PM

Some companies use it. But yea, it's rare. Mostly because the generation of leads on games right now still thinks they just know how to [manage projects] because they're so awesome at their job. unfortunately, they're not awesome at their job, are blowhard egoheaded weirdos, and think Delays Are OK.
Viin
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6159


Reply #36 on: August 22, 2008, 07:52:18 AM

I play the Product Owner role in Scrum, our PMs are suppose to be the Scrum Masters + PjM stuff (resource allocation, etc) but that hasn't worked out. Some of that has started to shift to dev managers. I really wish we did Scrum for Realz instead of this bastardized version we came up with to "make everyone happy".

- Viin
tommh
Developers
Posts: 20

Rockstar New England


Reply #37 on: October 21, 2008, 11:33:33 AM

Most of the studios I've worked for haven't even had a PM. Instead there's usually a producer, sometimes a creative director, a gaggle of leads, and some vaguely titled executive above it all. If you think this sounds inefficient...your right.
NiX
Wiki Admin
Posts: 7770

Locomotive Pandamonium


Reply #38 on: October 29, 2008, 09:09:17 AM

I'm in the middle of taking a Project Management course and I can see why it's hard to find a good PM. A majority of the people in my class still don't get what PM is. Our prof actually had the balls to outright say "Plan for the worst" and people can't comprehend such an idea. I guess that's why something like 60-70% of Projects fail.
Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117

I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #39 on: October 29, 2008, 09:47:30 AM

It's a simple mantra a lot of people just can't comprehend. I learned it from Donald Trump's Art of the Deal: if you can live with the worst possible outcome of a deal, it's a good deal. Seems a lot of people can't imagine the worst possible situation, or simply think it won't happen to them because they're special. It's my first consideration when planning almost anything.
Jeff Kelly
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6920

I'm an apathetic, hedonistic, utilitarian, nihilistic existentialist.


Reply #40 on: October 29, 2008, 09:53:46 AM

Well I wrote a huge post on project management in games a while back (at which point I was accused of being 'that who shall not be named' for style of quoting)

Most IT projects fail because of lack of project management. System and Embedded Software Companies regularly manage multi-year 200 person+ 100 Million LoC projects on the deadline because they have a tight PM in place (also failing a Deadline costs millions in regress and damages).

The only thing I mostly hear from game companies is 'OMFG project management is hard, we do new and different stuff that cannot be planned at all, please give us more monies'

Also management in game development largely suffers from the peter principle. Just because you were a good designer doesn't mean you are a good manager and people are never trained to be managers they just assume the roles.
Nebu
Terracotta Army
Posts: 17613


Reply #41 on: October 29, 2008, 10:22:36 AM

Sounds like these people could learn a lot from scientists.  99% of science fails to produce the results that we expected, yet we have to find some good in the results in order to maintain our research funding.  Plan for your ideas to fail from the get go.  If something works, be critical rather than optimistic.  I thought that was just common sense.

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
Soln
Terracotta Army
Posts: 4737

the opportunity for evil is just delicious


Reply #42 on: October 29, 2008, 11:34:08 AM

the sad truth I can vouch for as someone who makes his living as a PjM is that most organizations don't care -- they get things done without planning (agile or not).  Drama and fear are sometimes the biggest drivers to project completion, not good planning. And it's not just business types -- a lot of dev managers don't want PjM's in their tent either.  They don't want actual effort or bugs metrics being circulated. Ohhhhh, I see.
Pages: 1 [2] Go Up Print 
f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  News  |  Topic: Interview with Scott Jennings  
Jump to:  

Powered by SMF 1.1.10 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines LLC