Today we read and discuss Roman Voting. This is a quick and fun way to get a feel for what the team is thinking of an idea, or the current project. Check out the video below for the reading!
Summary - Some practices are meant to catch problems before they get too far. Don't make the mistake of having these practices humiliate or punish people. Assume they are human, didn't mean it and have some shared laughs. --- The practices collected in Gear Up! come from decades of experience, some painful, some that turned out fun in the long run. One such practice called “Lighten the Mood” came from the development of Midtown Madness in the late nineties at Angel Studios when we were struggling to keep the game from being continually broken. Often when a commit breaks a game, it's because someone ignored established testing practices. We didn’t have extensive build testing automation then. We had a dedicated PC, the “build monkey,” where any change committed had to be tested separately following every commit. Verifying the build on the build monkey could be a tedious task. Some people occasionally found excuses to skip it, sometimes to the detriment of the team. ...
Gear Up launched today! Wow...seven years almost to the day since my first book. What took so long? Well, cranking out 250 pages of text, illustrations and doing most of the proofreading on my own took years. I'm proud of the result, but it was a "check off the bucket list item" thing at the time. This book was different. First, let's visit its origin. Developers always ask me “we’re having problems doing X with methodology Y, what should we do?”. My first answer is always “What have you tried?”. I ask this because the best solutions usually come from the people doing the work and experimenting with new practices, not following so-called “best practices”. “Best practices” implies there are none better. Practices will always change as do our players, technology and markets. This leads to experimental practices, where teams explore ways of adapting to change and improving how they work together. Thinking about that original question, I think of al...
Gear Up! Advanced Game Development Practices has 23 practices that improve team bonding and communication. 360 Reviews Have teams review their peers frequently and regularly 20% Time Set aside some time to explore and re-focus Ask Powerful Questions Ask questions that drive thoughtful answers Demo Iteration Energize a team by letting them have some fun on their own Effective Postmortems Diagnose issues that have emerged and provide a clear plan to fix them Elephant In the Room Identify the biggest problem quickly and address it Free Day/Free Week Reward hard work with creative time Group Confession Encourage the team to be more open, less proud and more willing to learn from fails Lighten the Mood Don’t punish people for making mistakes - It’s how we often learn Love Card Wall Build team culture by sharing moments of respect and appre...
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