[casual_games] Production and project management Tools/Process

[Brent Lowrie]

Hi Wade

We have been experimenting with this same issue and at least for now we
have settled on Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/). We really love it
and find it greatly productive with the ability to create internal
workspaces as well as client-facing workspaces, track time, present team
member contact info, to-do lists, milestones, message and thread
tracking, email notification of almost any change or addition to the
project, file upload and download, etc. Fantastic. Plus the interface is
customizable so you can brand it with your own logo, colours and design
elements. 

For the money, I can't say enough. If it could only do version control
and ticketing... 

Brent Lowrie
Team Leader

RARE METHOD Games and Animation
500, 1812 4th Street S.W. Calgary AB T2S 1W1
P. 403.543.4500 x341 F. 403.532.3004

games.raremethod.com

-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Wade Tinney
Sent: October 30, 2005 4:15 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: [casual_games] Production and project management Tools/Process


Hi all-

Over here at Large Animal, we've spent the past year cleaning up and
revamping our production processes and I'm curious to hear which
tools/processes other folks are using to produce casual games. 

I'll go first: we are currently using Fogbugz as both a project
management and bug tracking tool, mediaWiki for reference material (such
as the design plan and production schedule) and related discussion,
SVN/Tortoise for source control and Word/Excel for other sundry tasks.
For sharing assets with clients/publishers, we've developed our own
web-based tool called Yessum for posting files, collecting comments, and
getting approval.

For other communications, we're an Outlook shop. Although we don't have
an exchange server installed, so we're thinking of using something like
this to sync up our calendars: http://schedules.4team.biz/ Has anyone
used it?

We've tried using instant messenger in the past, but concluded that it
was mainly a productivity sink-hole and did not create a clear and
easily usable record of communication like email does. In general, it
only fits into the workflow of the person *initiating* the conversation,
and is a distraction for everyone else. Other opinions?

As for process, we have a quick (20 minute) morning meeting every day
that is akin to an Agile Development SCRUM. We generally use an
iterative design process, with very early prototypes and a lot of
pre-production in general. Someone recently introduced me to the idea of
"Feature Driven Development". Somehow I'd never heard of that, but after
reading a bit more, it sounds pretty much like the approach we take when
planning a project. 

That's the overview for us. I can go into more detail on the above if
anyone is interested, but what I want to know is what are other folks
doing? Did any of you come over from larger (traditional) game
developers and bring useful production techniques with you?

Thanks, 


Wade

Wade Tinney
partner, game designer
Large Animal Games
http://www.largeanimal.com
wade at largeanimal.com
212-989-4312 


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