Game Development Community

R.I.P. PostMortems

by Eric Forhan · in General Discussion · 07/23/2003 (7:29 pm) · 1 replies

Interesting Gamasutra article: Goodbye Postmortems, Hello Critical Stage Analysis

It is an intriguing read, but one part I thought worth quoting for others to compare vs. their own game developing:

Quote:Here's a brief summary of postmortems from Game Developer magazine. See if you can recognize how many of these you've experienced first hand on the projects you've worked on. Note that each one of these issues occurred multiple times in different games:

-Scheduling issues - deadlines and deliverables weren't clearly defined or adhered to
-Lack of project plan or milestones
-Unrealistic schedule
-Poor communication within and across teams
-Major risks not front loaded
-Feature and content timing misaligned or not planned
-Insufficient staff
-Team casting problems
-The team structure didn't work
-Unrealistic goals
-Scoping issues - too much content, overambitious features
-Crunch time that seemed to last forever
-Eric

#1
07/24/2003 (4:33 pm)
I've not read the article yet, but those issues are not unique to game development projects. Many failed (and some successful) software projects of all types experience those problems. Everyone one of those problems falls under the heading "Poor Project Management".