The three round tables were attended by
mostly producers and project managers, with a smattering of artists,
programmers, and designers. The main subject areas covered were:
*the design
*how to include marketing people
*risk analysis
*hardware and development software changes
*involving the team
*when do you know when it's right.
Most attendees were involved in the
design phase of the project. Most also were the sole person who maintained
the design during production. No one had had success with distributing
maintenance of the design documents. A few groups had begun keeping
their design docs on an intranet web site. Beta seemed to be a point
where many did a major rewrite of the design, as that was the point
where most major changes had been decided upon. Beyond the specific
topic of the design during production, the conversation also turned
to related issues of basic project management.
Marketing people seemed to evoke and emotional response from all who
attended. It was generally agreed that including them early in the project
and getting them on the team, and behind the project, was very important.
Larger companies had institutionalized having a marketing person involved,
smaller companies had had varied experiences. The suggestion to simply
"go over their heads" when they caused problems was the preferred method
mentioned frequently by those that did not have marketing involved early.
Risk analysis was a topic that the round table returned to frequently.
There were few formal methodologies used, but everyone to some degree
attempted to identify those area of the project that were the highest
risk and to track them closely. Several companies had pushed the implementation
of these high risk area to a project phase between design and production.
High risk areas were frequently mentioned as the cause of design changes
during production.
Most attendees dealt with changes in production hardware and software
as a matter of course during production and said that they had allocated
extra time in the schedule. Changes to the spec for the target hardware/software
platform were to be resisted whenever possible. Most suggested that
these types of changes usually required redoing the design and schedule.
Although most people at the round table maintained the design alone,
design changes were always run past the programmers, at least, for a
reality check. Managers were divided into two groups. The smaller group
stressed a more democratic and honest approach to the team, where communication
and including everyone was valued. The larger group of managers were
more traditional in approach, where clear structure and goals were valued.
This group was not below adding unnecessary, but known to be objectionable,
items to the design so that team members could remove them and feel
that they had gotten their way.
Finally, more and more, people said that they looked to focus groups
to test whether changes in the design were the right ones. Many companies
built in regular focus testing. Some also relied on sales and marketing
to validate these design elements. Most people did informal analysis
of competing products, but they did not often cause design changes during
production.
