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I've had the opportunity to be a part of some really great teams.
Most of my former teammates are still my friends. In almost every case,
the managers have been members of the teams instead of setting
themselves apart from us.
They have recognized and played upon the
strengths and skills of each member of the team, building us up and
accomplishing projects efficiently. Going to work was fun. The work
itself may not have been, but the camaraderie of the team made the
effort worthwhile and exciting.
Recently, I've had the unique
opportunity to see this kind of leadership in a new light. I was
priveleged to attend Clinton Keith's IGDA Agile Game Development
Webinar. At the same time, my place of work was going through a
dramatic upheaval. We moved the center I worked at and, along with
that, a dramatic and militant management style was introduced.
Apparently, without rules, we have chaos and everything must be
repeated three times en masse in order to be understood. Teamwork is
given lip service, as in "The only way we work is as a team", but
management is set apart from the rest of the team. Smoking and
creative self-expression are off-limits, but rote learning of corporate
mission and quality statements are encouraged.
In required daily
huddles, we are told that we will be working under certain impediments
and requirements. Instead of interaction, a "shut up and deal"
attitude is expected. This corporate militant style favors a divide
and conquer mentality over creative and collaborative problem-solving.
Seeing these 2 styles side-by-side has given me a unique perspective on
the true heart of teamwork and what makes that heart beat.
At
the heart of the scrum team is the interaction of the team. A daily
meeting around the task board is interactive, vibrant, collaborative,
visual, and tactile. It is a visual way of showing the goal the team
is striving toward and the progress they are making. They, each and
every member of the team, are peers.
They own the goal. It's a team
effort. They gather around the board to align themselves with each
other, to honor each others' contribution to the effort, and to
course-correct when they are missing the mark. They argue, discuss,
share, learn, continually improve, celebrate, boost each other up, and
create solutions.
There is another thing that scrum does for the
team: it creates transparency. Since scrum depends on collaboration
and continual forward progress, problems are addressed by the team as
they crop up instead of dealing with them later or covering the problem
under a layer of "spin".
A structured, militant environment will never create a team. A team
works together toward a shared goal. A group works together toward a
goal given to them. Scrum is messy, and noisy. It lives, it breathes,
it stretches, it morphs and it expands. Interaction is the heart of
the team. The heart of scrum, is the team.
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If the music industry had the same kind of must-be-a-team demagoguery, David Bowie would never have been allowed to appear. He's an individual, not a team. (Sure, when he tours he needs a group to play the music. But he's still David Bowie.)
Teams also hinder as much as they help. When everyone on the team needs to understand *why* something is being implemented - after all, it doesn't serve teamwork to follow instructions - it bogs the process down as the core designer must continually resell the vision. No suspension of judgement from the group. Too many cooks. Lowest common denominator. Groupthink. You start out making French cuisine, but eventually it gets dragged down into hot dogs - that's the only thing everyone can agree on. Why do you think there are so many games that are first person shooters? Everyone can agree on them.
It is true that just building a team not the end and is often clobbered with marketing jargon, that wants to tap into the success of small teams. I have worked on a team that really galvanized. You need strong leadership and a clear vision, but also room to let the creative developers run.
If your team works well together and problems are ok to be voiced you will never run into the problem that problems are swept under the carpet. The problem with well structured teams is that often the right people do not talk with each other and huge problems are ignored until it is (almost) too late. "It is not my problem, my module works fine." is not very helpful if the entire software fails.
Tim, I don't agree with your view. Unless I'm misunderstanding, you're saying that a good team isn't important? The leaders should be those with the vision for the game, and the rest should follow? I also don't see the relationship in your musician analogy. Musicians, generally, work by themselves or in extremely small teams/groups. You have the singer/band and the producer(s). There are many more people involved in making a game and that's where the need for a team comes in.
I believe, a developer without a strong team is more likely to make soulless games. If you're just doing what you're told by the boss you are less likely to be motivated. You want people to be passionate about what they're making. This doesn't happen if they're not engaged. This isn't to say that you want groupthink, etc. You need strong leadership that sets out the vision for the end result, but the rest of the team needs to have input and a sense of ownership. If successful the end result should be an awesome game.
Do I believe that this is how games should be made? No. However, if the powers that be at a game development company have a particular design in mind for a game and there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it then I also think a professional game developer should be professional enough to respect the goals of the company and get the job done. We all have these ideas in our heads for new features and ideas, and we all want to be able to shine creatively, but at the end of the day, as fun as your job might be, it's still a business and the company decides.