Production Practices 101

by Jean-Marc Vincent (April 2005)

The main feature of the April meeting was an hour-long lecture entitled "Business Case for Improved Production Practices" from Steve McConnell, Chief Engineer of Construx Software. This keynote lecture was given during the second day of GDC as part of the IGDA's day-long summit on the problems of 'quality of life' faced by game developers.

McConnell aimed at illustrating the value of improved planning in software development. The key benefits for development teams and management being reduced cost, improved quality, improved cycle time, better predictability, and enhanced morale. With appealing statistics on the state of project management in the software industry, he went on to describe why most projects are run in an inefficient manner due to procrastination, fear of change, lack of cross-pollination between different industries, etc...

For presentation slides and a more detailed summary of Steve's lecture, see the links below:

• Quality of Life Summit
• The Business Case for Improved Production Practices by Steve McConnell (pdf - 202kb)
• Postcard From GDC 2005 - Quality of Life Summit: The Business Case for Improved Production Practices
• QoL Summit Report and Proceedings (pdf - 253kb)

A discussion among the chapter attendees followed the presentation on how to apply some of the opportunities offered by best practices in project planning to the game industry. Some participants mentioned that although they had some knowledge about these practices, they found it rather difficult to implement them in their work environment (i.e. "translate" abstract principles to the direct application in games development). Others explained how they managed to keep crunch time to an absolute minimum using practices such as extreme programming or formal reviews at numerous stages of the project. But, in general there was a real sense of developers struggling with project complexity and a desire to improve. A lot of emphasis was placed on the need to speak the same "language" as managers/execs, putting the cost of poor production practices into tangible terms they can understand.

The evening ended with the traditional IGDA members' raffle for game development books from Charles River Media, t-shirts and other goodies. Networking activities took place afterwards.

April Pictures

Look into the light: McConnell enlightens Montreal developers

QoL Committee chair, Francois Dominic Laramee dives into the post-presentation discussion

Danny Oros (Ubisoft), Guillaume Voghel and Ben Miller (Ubisoft) contemplate the need for better project/people management training

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