23 Practices to Improve Small Team Culture

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 appreciation visually
No Meeting Days Provide a regular day to focus on desk work
Notes of Encouragment Encourage and reward awesome work with a personal touch
Open Topic Board Get feedback and generate ideas as a team
PechaKucha Introductions Help build a team by learning about each other
Playtest Effectively playtest the game and generate feedback
Prototype Team Allow the team to be adventurous and explore new possibilities
Silent Hour A solid uninterrupted hour of work
Space for Retrospectives Let the developers retrospect before bringing in a loud product owner
Team Hardening Week A week of daily iterations designed to help the team increases quality, alignment and vision
Team Health Quickly identify your project’s health through team health
The 5 Whys A retrospective technique for getting to the root cause of a problem
Use the Koosh Ball A simple token for conversation among a large group of people
Wall of Pain Capture painful processes/ bottlenecks/errors that are current, even if they can’t be fixed immediately

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