A master class on practical Leadership and Management first taught at Montreal Game Summit 2017. Covers: 1. Leadership and Management 2. Communication 3. Influence 4. Cooperation and Collaboration 5. Dealing with Conflict 6. Theory of Motivation 7. Managing Creativity 8. Structure and Organization 9. Policies and Staff 10. Team training 11. Strategy and Planning 12. Risk management 13. Establishing Process 14. Values

1. Leadership and Management
Sergei Savchenko
Game Dev
Part 2 of 2

2. 2
Part 1: We spoke about
1. Leadership and Management
2. Communication
3. Influence
4. Cooperation and Collaboration
5. Dealing with Conflict
6. Theory of Motivation
7

3. 3
Part 2: We will talk about
7. Managing Creativity
8. Structure and Organization
9. Policies and Staff
10. Team training
11. Strategy and Planning
12. Risk management
13. Establishing Process
14. Values 8

4. 4213
7. Managing Creativity

5. 5
▪ Creatives vs.
Managers
or
▪ Artists vs. Engineers
▪ Do you think you
are Left brain?
Right brain?

6. 6
Neuroscience
▪ No left Brain vs.
Right Brain
▪ Modern thinking:
Interaction of
Default Mode
Network and
Executive Control
Network
215

7. 7216

8. 8
Ideas – Products of associations:
▪ Divergent Associations
▪ Convergent Associations
217

9. 9
Divergent associations:
▪ Combine different, often unusual,
elements from worldview
▪ Reformat an existing element through
the prism of another (often seemingly
unrelated) element
218

10. 10

11. 11

12. 12
Idea Convergence:
▪ Deduce implications of the idea
▪ Check if the idea fits existing
constraints
221

13. 13

14. 14

15. 15
▪ Visionary ≠ Divergent Thinker
▪ Analyst ≠ Convergent Thinker
▪ Oftentimes could well be the
opposite…
224

16. 16
Creativity
Psychology of Creativity
225
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

17. 17
Symbolic
domain
Creator
Audience

18. 18
Symbolic
domain
Creator
Audience
New
Contrib
ution
Experts

19. 19
Types on intelligence:
▪ Fluid intelligence
▪ Quick reasoning on unfamiliar domain
▪ Declines with age
▪ Crystallized intelligence
▪ Recombining existing knowledge
▪ Improves with age

20. 20
Divergent Thinking:
▪ What helps:
▪ Playfulness of the situation
▪ Positive mood
▪ What doesn’t help:
▪ Negative mood
▪ Sleep deprivation

21. 21
Brainstorms
▪ Brainstorms with many participants usually
don’t work so great due to social/cognitive
biases at play…
▪ Could be easily hijacked by the most proactive
members
▪ Group can easily conform to a specific direction
or person
▪ Can be significantly slower compared to an
individual
▪ Prone to priming pressures
▪ Etc.

22. 22
Brainstorms
What could be done better:
▪ Broad domain exploration phase (btw a
creator who refuses to look at competition
game to stay “pure” should be let go)
▪ Separate in time the exposition of the
problem and ideas presentation
▪ Individual or small group work on new ideas
is often more productive
▪ Separate in time new idea presentation and
voting/decision making
231

23. 23
What can you do to help?
▪ There are goals every step of the way
▪ There is an immediate feedback
▪ Balance of challenge and skill
▪ Distractions excluded
▪ No excessive worry of failure

24. 24
▪ Does your creative director need to
be a divergent thinker?
In smaller team? In larger team?
▪ Creative director == young, original
thinker? Or experienced, broad mind?

25. 25
Symbolic
domain
Creator
Audience
New
Contrib
ution
Experts
Creative Director?
Creative Director?

26. 26
▪ Oftentimes we overvalue divergent ideas/
importance of innovation and undervalue
solid execution… A type of a cognitive bias…

27. 27
Creativity Inc.
Overcoming the unforeseen
forces that stand in the way
of true inspiration.
236
Ed Catmull

28. 28238
8. Structure and
Organization

29. 29
GM
EP QA
EngineeringArt Design
Art Director
Design
Director
Tech Director
Creative
Director
IT HR

30. 30
▪ Structure
▪ Organization
240
GM
EP QA
EngineeringArt Design
Art Director
Design
Director
Tech Director
Creative
Director
IT HR

31. 31
Structure & Organization
▪ Structure
▪ Part of management system
▪ Reporting chain
▪ Objective authority
▪ Organization
▪ Who to go to with a particular issue
▪ Whose opinion is valued?
▪ Subjective authority
241

32. 32
Structure
▪ Separates people by focusing their
attention on part of the whole
▪ Often portrayed as a chart
▪ Defined areas of responsibility
▪ Objective authority through reporting
chain
242

33. 33
▪ There are 4 types of corporate
structures:

34. 34
Structures:
▪ Hierarchy:
▪ Clear manager for every employee
▪ Information flow up the reporting chain
(in theory)
▪ Decisions flow down the reporting chain
(in theory)
244

35. 35
Structures:
▪ Committee:
▪ Flat structure with little objective
authority
▪ Voting based (voting often implicit)
245

36. 36
Structures:
▪ Matrix:
▪ Dual reporting through domain chain and
through project management chain
▪ Attempts to objectify a healthy conflict
between discipline and project
246

37. 37
Structures:
▪ Ecology:
▪ Implicit or explicit competition between
sub-teams
▪ Ultimately leads to survival of the fittest
247

38. 38
To summarize:
There are 4 different structure types:
▪ Hierarchy
▪ Committee
▪ Matrix
▪ Ecology

39. 39
“…In 2010, I was an executive officer in the Navy, splitting my time between U.S.
headquarters and being deployed to an international location… I was authorized to hire a
civilian to handle budget management etc.”
“…On his first day, we sat down in front of a large whiteboard, and I gave him a one-hour
history lesson on our organization, ranging from where we fell within the military’s formal
hierarchy to where our tactical units fit within our own. I walked him through our
relationships with other military units, how things had evolved post-9/11, and how our
current structures were designed to function. He took it all in. “Now here’s the bad news,” I
said. “It doesn’t actually work like that…”
“…There’s a complex web of key personalities and networks that make it function,” I
pointed out, “and your job sits right in the middle of them.” He laughed, acknowledging the
challenge that posed. My advice was simple: I’d be back in two months, and when I got
home, I wanted him to explain to me how he thought things actually worked, including his
take on key personalities, critical relationships they maintained, and any other minutiae to
navigating our system. Until then, he was not to engage directly with anyone outside of
our team. We’d move slowly at first so that he’d be able to move fast in the long run…”

40. 40
One Mission
Leadership, Navy SEAL style
250
Chris Fussell

41. 41
Organization
▪ A way in which people work together
towards a common goal or for
common good
▪ Subjective authority
▪ Usually involves interactions through
different relationship types
251

42. 42
▪ There 4 different relationship
types:

43. 43
Relationship Types:
▪ Supplier-Customer:
▪ Based on the explicit or implicit contract
of need and supply
253

44. 44
Relationship Types:
▪ Peer-to-Peer:
▪ Ideally cooperative or collaborative
relationship towards shared common end
254

45. 45
Relationship Types:
▪ Decision Maker-Follower:
▪ May or may not be part of structure/
objective authority
255

46. 46
Relationship Types:
▪ Advise Giver-Seeker:
▪ Advise givers may be internal or external
▪ An important subtype: Mentor-Trainee
256

47. 47
To summarize:
There are 4 common organizational
relationship types:
▪ Supplier-Customer
▪ Peer-to-Peer
▪ Decision Maker-Follower
▪ Advise Giver-Seeker

48. 48
Beware…
▪ Organization is often more important
than structure due to social inertia at
play:
▪ Companies survive structure changes
every 6 months
▪ Companies often don’t survive
organization break down 258

49. 49
Beware…
▪ The structure change doesn’t
immediately change the
organization…
▪ The organization is not always a
positive factor… It may slow down
change significantly
▪ Conformance to authority may
develop rather quickly… 259

50. 50
▪ The Milgram experiment on obedience to
authority figures was a series of social
psychology experiments conducted by
Yale University psychologist Stanley
Milgram. They measured the willingness
of study participants to obey an authority
figure who instructed them to perform
acts conflicting with their personal
conscience.
-Wikipedia
260

51. 51
▪ Elements of conformity could be positive or negative
for any team… Falling in line behind a decision could
be positive, unless, of course, it is a wrong decision…

52. 52
Conformity
▪ Informational
▪ Conforming to what is perceived as
authoritative source of information
▪ Normative
▪ Conforming to norms and customs
262

53. 53
▪ Here are some example of structure
surgeries that can help solve specific
production issues:

54. 54
Structure surgery:
▪ Protect product innovation:
▪ Any corporate structure rapidly becomes
conservative and concerned with
maintaining its own existence
▪ It will routinely kill innovation
▪ New products/ideas are better explored by
Skunk Works type org with direct line to the
very top or near top and limited information
exchange with the rest of org

55. 55
▪ From Kelly Johnson’s 14 rules of Skunk Works:
▪ The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all
aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.
▪ The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost
vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called
normal systems).
▪ There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded
thoroughly.
▪ Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate
security measures.

56. 56
Structure surgery:
Speed up decision making:
▪ Committees often end up operating by consensus
▪ Many organizations devolve into a distributed
committee where many stakeholders can be
saying “no” (the least risky option for the exec)
and very few “yes” (a very risky option for the
exec)
▪ Elevate a single person to position of authority
and let that person rebuild a group of followers
around. Prepare for casualties…

57. 57
Structure surgery:
▪ Improve customer fit of products:
▪ Parts of the organization may be overly
preoccupied with their piece of the whole
and forgetting about the overall
customer needs
▪ Verticalize the structure with the team
responsible for end to end feature
(feature pods)

58. 58
Structure surgery:
▪ Improve robustness of technology:
▪ Key pieces of product relied on by
multiple internal customers may not
have an owner
▪ Horizontalize the structure with a team
responsible for a library or engine (e.g.:
establish central tech team)

59. 59
Structure surgery:
▪ Lower cost:
▪ Internal development is expensive. Non
core assets, engines, game modes can
be outsourced or licensed
▪ Helps to not pay for the team in between
projects

60. 60
Structure surgery:
▪ Increase quality:
▪ Outsourced and licensed assets, engines
etc. may not be specifically designed for
your product and may weigh down on
overall quality
▪ Insourcing the work and creating
internal expertise, generally improve
quality longer term

61. 61
Beware
Insource Outsource

62. 62273
9. Policies and Staff

63. 63
Your new engineer (3 weeks on the job)
comes over early in the morning: “You
asked me yesterday to check if the slow
frame rate had to do with the number
of rendering primitives we are
drawing.”, says the engineer and
continues: “I checked it and this is not
the case. What do you want me to do
next?”

64. 64
▪ What do you do:
(a) Ask to verify physics
system
(b) Tell that you (or Sr.
Engineer Bob) will profile tomorrow
(c) Ask to figure out profiling
issue and not bother you
unless 100% stuck

65. 65
Working through others
▪ Few things can be accomplished by a
single individual…
▪ You can try to do everything yourself
(and fail) or work through others
276

66. 66
Beware
▪ Working through others is less about
specialist work
▪ Leaders/managers trade depth of
expertise for breadth of knowledge
277

67. 67
Working Through Others
▪ Through leadership
▪ Purpose
▪ Focus
▪ Commitment
▪ Through management
▪ Assessment
▪ Strategy/Plans
▪ Structure/Organization
▪ Control/Decisions/Process
278

68. 68
▪ What do you do:
(a) Give another task
(b) Take job back
(c) Give up control

69. 69
If you answered (a) or (b)
Soon or immediately after:
Your new engineer: “What do you want
me to do next?”

70. 70
If you answered (c)
You may have started to give
ownership of the problem to someone

71. 71
▪ Working through others imply establishing
a policy and not taking the job back

72. 72
▪ A formalized policy consists of 3
things:

73. 73
Policy:
▪ Authority:
▪ Ability to make decisions
284

74. 74
Policy:
▪ Resources:
▪ Discretionary use of people’s time,
money, equipment etc.
285

75. 75
Policy:
▪ Accountability:
▪ An expectation of outcomes
286

76. 76
To summarize:
A policy needs to outline 3 areas:
▪ Authority
▪ Resources
▪ Accountability

77. 77
Do you have a Policy?
▪ For your own job?
▪ Do you know what needs to be done?
▪ Do you know what is your decision
domain?
▪ Do you know what is available to you?
288

78. 78
▪ Imagine you are a ex Technical Lead who moved
on to a management role
▪ You are a manager of the new Systems lead
▪ First party has just bounced back your game
submission because of a crash bug. There is a
risk of busting the ship date…
▪ Technical Director of the project is not available.
Already out on PTO and on a flight to Sydney
(not Sydney, NS)
▪ Systems lead is struggling…
▪ You think the team is not on the right path and
you have a very good idea what to investigate
and eventually fix the issue

79. 79
▪ Do you:
(a) Let your Systems lead continue to look for a fix
(b) Take charge of the issue

80. 80
Breaking Policies
▪ Sometimes, policies must be broken…
▪ If the house is on fire, abandon
policies and act as a specialist if you
know how and think this will help. You
will sort out policy issues later
291

81. 81
▪ Interviewing one of directors of a
project about to implode:
“...But I am not here to do low level
work, my responsibility is to support
my leads, even letting them do their
mistakes…”

82. 82
Breaking Policies
▪ Sometimes, you may allow people to
make mistakes
▪ You may not allow people you are
responsible for to make career ruining
mistakes
293

83. 83
▪ When required results are not
achieved…

84. 84
Performance Issues
▪ Is the rock too big for the person?
▪ Redesign the work…
▪ Is the person too small for the rock?
▪ Exercise leadership…
295

85. 85
The Rock
▪ Lack of resources
▪ Lack of time
▪ Wrong scope
▪ Unrealistic quality target
▪ Boxed by some/all of the above
296

86. 86
The Pyramid
It is often said: can only
do 3 out of 4 or even
worse 2 out of 4…
(will come back to this
one later)
297
Time
Cost Scope
Quality

87. 87
▪ Re-distribute, re-scope, re-plan, re-
commit! More in the following sections.

88. 88
The Person
▪ Lacks knowledge
▪ Training? Mentor-trainee relationship?
▪ Doesn’t know what needs to be done
▪ Policy lacking? Training?
▪ Not feeling work is important
▪ Common end missing or misaligned?
▪ Not feeling work is doable
▪ Plan ok?
299

89. 89
The Person
▪ Misunderstands what needs to be
done
▪ Communication ok?
▪ Bored, not interested in work
▪ Needs ok? Vision ok?
▪ Thinking that it needs to be done
differently
▪ Trust?
300

90. 90
The Person
▪ Conflicts with others
▪ Trust? Needs? Competition? Culture?
▪ Stalled by others
▪ Plan? Structure? Organization?
▪ Outside context
▪ May not be fixable…
301

91. 91
▪ How to intervene?

92. 92
Intervene
▪ Present factual results
▪ Confirm factual results
▪ Ask what happened? why?
▪ Listen…
▪ Use leadership & management tools
to offer ways forward and leaving the
freedom of choice always open to the
individual
303

93. 93
Beware
▪ You cannot react to what you think
someone thought or to your
interpretation of behaviour. Both may
be significantly off
▪ You can only react to the fact of
results committed not achieved
304

94. 94
Beware
▪ Attribution bias is often very strong
with managers (attributing behaviour
to the person rather than the
situation)
▪ It is ok to sometimes try to change
someone’s situation (move to another
team). It is not always “passing a
problem to others”
305

95. 95
Beware
▪ Psychological reactance. Motivational
reaction to imposed rules or
regulation that appear to limit
behavioural freedom of choice of the
individual. It may result in significant
strengthening of the opposition
306

96. 96
▪ Sometimes the problems go
beyond the individual…

97. 97
Change…
▪ Team is not making progress
▪ Market moved rapidly
▪ Consumer tastes changed
▪ Technology changed
▪ Costs are up, revenues are down
▪ Team failed or on a path of failure
308

98. 98
▪ Change is needed. How to affect
it?

99. 99
Change
▪ Identify barriers
▪ Multiple, wrong or no agenda (no common end)
▪ No commitment
▪ Poor organization
▪ Inability to communicate
▪ Lack of trust
▪ Conflict
▪ Etc.
▪ Determine immediate steps to get past
barriers
310

100. 100
Change
▪ Intervene with small group of key
individuals first
▪ Intervene with a larger group after
▪ Get out of the way! Leaving updated
policies behind
311

101. 101313
10. Team training

102. 102
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL2crVUSvjo

103. 103
▪ What were the learnings for the
participants?
▪ I am not saying it was completely
useless… but…

104. 104
▪ 3 training examples with
specific learnings:

105. 105

106. 106

107. 107

108. 108

109. 109
Product Development Training
▪ Empathy training
(acting out of role)
▪ Rapid iteration
▪ Risk management
▪ Group collaboration

110. 110

111. 111

112. 112

113. 113

114. 114
Creativity Process Training
▪ Idea generation
▪ Idea validation
▪ UX
▪ Monetization vs.
mind share

115. 115

116. 116

117. 117

118. 118

119. 119
Leadership Bootcamp Training
▪ Lead vs. follow
▪ Communication
under stress
▪ Planning and
executing
▪ Overcoming the self

120. 120
▪ It takes 10000 hrs to become
really good at something. It takes
relatively little time (100-300 hrs)
to understand key elements of an
unfamiliar field. Don’t be afraid to
spend time to do it! It will help
your decision making a lot

121. 121334
11. Strategy and Planning

122. 122
Remember Vision?
335
Can a computer make you cry?
Join us. We see farther.

123. 123
▪ What is the process to arrive to
effective, long term (strategic) vision?

124. 124
▪ Ultimately establishing strategic vision is like
making a bet… Has to do a lot with creativity and
divergent thinking. Answers What? and Why?

125. 125
▪ Followed by figuring out steps/tactics to
achieve it (plan). Having to do a lot with
convergent thinking. Answer Who? and How?

126. 126
▪ 4 components to consider when
establishing a strategy:

127. 127
Strategy:
▪ Situational Assessment:
▪ Information sources, their quality and
volume
▪ Strong points and weak points
▪ Existing expertise
▪ Technology base
▪ Reliability of the assessment

128. 128
Strategy:
▪ Trends and Opportunities:
▪ Market dynamics (e.g.: raise of PC free
to play, VR/AR or Switch)
▪ Exploiting existing advantages (e.g.:
move to a new platform or new territory
with an existing title)

129. 129
▪ Tools:
▪ Google Trends
▪ Analytics of your prior games
▪ Sales stats
▪ Top charts
▪ NPD
▪ VGchartz
▪ Etc.

130. 130
Strategy:
▪ Vision of Desired Outcomes:
▪ Purpose (why your desired outcome is
valuable or essential)
▪ Focus (what is important and what is
not)
▪ Ultimately, a bet…

131. 131
Blue Ocean Strategy
Creative entrepreneurship.
What to focus and not to
focus on when building a new
product or service
344
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

132. 132
Strategy:
▪ Success Metrics:
▪ What would indicate the strategy succeeding
▪ Number of players?
▪ DAU?
▪ ARPPU?
▪ Retention?
▪ MC?
▪ More often than not this changes radically
overtime…
▪ Beware of making this part of your vision… It
can be misinterpreted

133. 133
To summarize:
Important strategy elements:
▪ Situational assessment
▪ Trends and Opportunities
▪ Vision of Desired Outcomes
▪ Success Metrics

134. 134
▪ Betting is hard and mistakes are
common…

135. 135
Common Strategic Mistakes:
▪ Hidden status-quo preference:
▪ Lets innovate, but not loose existing
markets and products…
▪ Lets try a MTX/free to play business model
but still charge $80 for the box…

136. 136
Common Strategic Mistakes:
▪ Hijack by secondary goal:
▪ Letting synergy or savings from unification override
product vision
▪ E.g.: to minimize cost lets all move to the same
technology (It got to be cheaper! Sharing will be
incredible! We don’t need 5 streaming systems in the
company etc.)
▪ Games of different genres (e.g.: sports games and
shooters) require quite different tech… Little if any
long term savings when unifying tech, lots of politics
to control the shared resource, high immediate cost to
unify.

137. 137

138. 138
Common Strategic Mistakes:
▪ False consequence:
▪ Correlation is not causation
▪ E.g.: High Metacritic means persistent value
of properties means high revenue. So lets
aim for high average MC!
▪ What if you achieve high MC but don’t sell?
▪ Teams also start to care about MC at the expense
of dev costs…

139. 139
▪ 6 elements of a Plan to achieve
the desired strategic vision:

140. 140
Elements of a Plan:
▪ Prioritized scope (focus):
▪ Outlines deliverables/features in
prioritized form

141. 141
Elements of a Plan:
▪ Resources:
▪ Staffing
▪ Time
▪ Budget
▪ Equipment
▪ Etc.

142. 142
Elements of a Plan:
▪ Predictability:
▪ Historical data
▪ External experience
▪ Granularity of planning

143. 143
Degrees of assessment
▪ Knowing you are doing well
▪ Knowing you are doing poorly
▪ Not knowing you are doing poorly
▪ Not knowing you are doing well (You
would think this doesn’t happen?)

144. 144
To summarize:
Elements of a Plan:
▪ Prioritized Scope
▪ Resources (Staff, budget, time)
▪ Predictability
Discussed previously:
▪ Structure and Organization
To be discussed:
▪ Risk Management
▪ Process

145. 145
▪ But… Cognitive Biases…
Cognitive Reflection
Test Instrument

146. 146
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Anchoring bias:
▪ Tendency to rely disproportionally on the
first piece of information offered

147. 147
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Availability heuristic:
▪ Relying on immediate personal example
rather than overall statistics to make a
decision

148. 148
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Clustering illusion:
▪ Tendency to consider inevitable clusters
arising in small samples to be non-
random

149. 149
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Congruence bias:
▪ Tendency to directly test a hypothesis
rather than to test if its negative
produces the same outcome

150. 150
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Hindsight bias:
▪ We tend to see some outcomes as easily
predictable post factum
363

151. 151
A Cognitive Bias?
It is often said: can only
do 3 out of 4 or even
worse 2 out of 4…
364
Time
Cost Scope
Quality

152. 152

153. 153367
12. Risk Management

154. 154
▪ You are in charge of relief in an
emergency zone:
▪ Option A: Save 200 lives
▪ Option B: 33% chance to save all 600
people and 66% chance saving no one

155. 155
▪ You are in charge of relief in an
emergency zone:
▪ Option C: Let 400 die
▪ Option D: 33% chance to save everyone
66% chance 600 will die

156. 156
Risk
▪ Risk is the potential that a chosen
action or activity (including the choice
of inaction) will lead to a loss (an
undesirable outcome).
- Wikipedia
369

157. 157
▪ Does every undesirable outcome
needs to be eliminated?

158. 158
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

159. 159
4 Risks Impact Categories:
372
Time
Cost Scope
Quality

160. 160
Sources of risk
▪ Technical
▪ Staffing
▪ Funding
▪ Schedule
▪ IT
▪ Contractual
▪ Environmental
▪ Etc.

161. 161
High Level Strategies:
▪ Avoid
▪ Mitigate
▪ Transfer
▪ Accept

162. 162
Likelihood vs. Magnitude
▪ High likelihood/high magnitude risks need
to be addressed: avoided, mitigated or
transferred
▪ Low likelihood/low magnitude risks could
be accepted
▪ Low likelihood/high magnitude?
▪ High likelihood/low magnitude?

163. 163
▪ But… Once again… Cognitive
Biases…

164. 164
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Framing effect:
▪ A potential to derive different
conclusions from data depending on its
presentation

165. 165
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Zero-risk bias:
▪ A tendency to prefer complete
elimination of risk even when
alternatives may be lowering overall risk

166. 166
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Ambiguity effect:
▪ A tendency to avoid options where risk
appears unknown

167. 167
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Information bias:
▪ A desire for more information even when
it is not a pre-requisite to any decision
making

168. 168
Cognitive Biases:
▪ Normalcy bias:
▪ An inability to plan for an event that has
not occurred in the past

169. 169
Thinking Fast and Slow
Intuition, logic and cognitive
biases
382
Daniel Kahneman

170. 170
Dealing with Cognitive Biases
▪ Awareness of the biases helps to fight
them
▪ Talking to advisors you trust
▪ Developing and forcing your “System 2”
more:
▪ System 1: Initial intuitive perception of the
problem
▪ System 2: Executive control that uses
System 1 output and prospects into the
future and attempts checking current
hypothesis

171. 171
▪ Possible strategies to mitigate
risks:

172. 172
The Big Four:
▪ Add time (or deliver in parts)
▪ Add resources (people, budget etc.)
▪ Reduce scope (reprioritize scope)
▪ Reduce quality (compete on price)

173. 173
Dealing with Risk:
▪ Prototype:
▪ Develop a small scale version that
addresses some or all of the key risks
▪ You cannot build a game before you
build a game though…
386

174. 174
Dealing with Risk:
▪ Plan B:
▪ If you have a fall back you can
potentially afford to risk
▪ Perhaps implement Plan B first before
proceeding with risky Plan A
387

175. 175
Dealing with Risk:
▪ Develop alternatives:
▪ Develop multiple solutions usually by
different teams
▪ Could be really expensive
▪ Could help mitigate technical, IT and
tools risks
388

176. 176
Dealing with Risk:
▪ Parallelize:
▪ Split the problem into parts
symmetrically
▪ Build content by multiple teams working
in parallel
389

177. 177
Dealing with Risk:
▪ Pipeline:
▪ Split the problem asymmetrically
▪ Once loaded, pipeline output is a fraction
of the overall that equals to the time in
the longest phase
390

178. 178
Dealing with Risk:
▪ Iterate:
▪ Cyclically refine the solution until
reaching quality threshold or running out
of time
391

179. 179393
13. Establishing Process

180. 180
Caproni CA.4
394

181. 181395

182. 182
Caproni CA.60
Transaereo (Noviplano)
396

183. 183397

184. 184
▪ Game development projects rarely fail
purely because of the process issues…
▪ Yet, solid process helps to establish work
collaboration patterns and can definitely
improve your efficiency
▪ It usually helps to improve in areas you
already know how to solve…

185. 185
Any Development Process:
▪ Turns goals into designs and into
actions
▪ Actions produce artefacts
(deliverables and information)
▪ Evaluates progress towards goals
▪ Surfaces new discovery
▪ Adjusts goals, plan and the process
itself

186. 186
Practices and Methodologies
▪ Practices
▪ Rapid prototyping
▪ Incremental development
▪ Continuous integration
▪ Methodologies
▪ Agile Scram
▪ Scaled Agile Framework (SAF)
▪ Large Scale Scram (LeSS)
▪ Kanban
▪ Design/Prototype first

187. 187
Waterfall
▪ Somewhat of a historic accident. Mentioned (not by name) in Dr.
Winston W. Royce “Managing the Development of Large Software
Systems” IEEE WESCON 1970 as an example of what not to do…
“I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky
and invites failure”
Dr. Winston W. Royce

188. 188
Important Questions:
▪ How often will requirements change?
▪ How much discovery is anticipated?
▪ Is it shallow discovery or fundamental
discovery?
▪ New product vs. sequel vs. evolutionary
product?
▪ Proportion of content work to engineering
work?
▪ What are the internal and external
dependencies?
▪ Cost of failure?

189. 189
Agile Scram -ish Design/prototype
first -ish
Kanban -ish
Area Gameplay
programming, AI
features
Low level engine
(streaming system,
low level animation
etc.)
Character art,
environment art
Requirements Driven by designers Driven by TD
(budgets, tech
direction)
Driven by AD (style
guide, art direction
doc)
Change Significant, usability
driven
Moderate,
experiment driven
Moderate, art
feedback driven
Scalable Yes No Yes
Pipelineable No No Yes
Feedback frequency
needed
Frequent Infrequent Moderate

190. 190
With Any Process
▪ Distribute ownership and create policies
▪ Evolve the organization
▪ Have a method to resolve or moderate
conflicts
▪ Adapt the process for the work that needs
to be done rather than attempting to
readjust work to fit the process
404

191. 191
Beware
▪ Small, well maintained process is always
better than a complex one that no one
manages to follows
▪ Any process seems to work better on your
next game (mostly since organization and
knowledge have evolved)
▪ Game development is not just software
development, not everything in terms of
existing processes can be applied without
change
405

192. 192
Signs of a broken Process:
▪ Grave-yard of tracking documents
▪ Started a tracking doc that survived for
2-3 weeks
▪ Outdated bibles
▪ When something unexpected happens
– meetings get cancelled
▪ People on the team don’t know who is
in charge of the entire project…
406

193. 193
Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK)
Encyclopedia of project
management patterns and
techniques.
407
Project Management Institute

194. 194409
14. Values

195. 195
Your Toolset of Leadership and Management:
410
Communication Tools
Influence Tools
Cooperation and
Collaboration tools
Tools to deal with conflict
Understanding of motivation
Understanding of creativity
Policies
Structure and
Organization
Training tools
Planning tools
Risk management
Processes

196. 196
▪ What is often more important for
sustained success are shared convictions
and principles
▪ Shared convictions and principles ==
values
▪ Values develop over time through
successes and failures, but they take a
leader to spell out.

197. 197

198. 198
▪ Yes, social norms indeed should
be values of everyone…

199. 199
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mKxekNhMqY

200. 200
▪ Live your values! Speak about your values!
Narrativize! Over and over and over!

201. 201
▪ Would you subscribe to the
following?

202. 202
▪ Work is not about you, its about
what needs to be done

203. 203
▪ Trust is more important than
Control

204. 204
▪ Integrity is more important than
being right

205. 205
▪ Results matter always

206. Thank you!!
For your consulting/training needs:
savchenko.sergei@gmail.com