Monday, July 14:

Production Testing and Bug Tracking by Jamie Fristrom
Identifying and fixing bugs needs to be done early and often. One reason we keep forgetting this is because of that phase of the project we call "alpha" or "feature complete." The fact that we have this phase implies that we're not supposed to fix our bugs now; we're supposed to get the features in, and then we'll fix all the bugs later in the alpha phase. That's not a good development process. In this article Jamie Fristom explains why and presents a number of steps you can take to help your team fix bugs before moving on.

Postmortem: Ubi Soft Shanghai's Splinter Cell by Wu Dong Hao
When Splinter Cell had to be ported from the Xbox to the Playstation 2, Ubi Soft threw everything at the project to it out by the end of its fiscal year. One facet of this intense porting project was that it brought developers from Ubi Soft's studios in France and Italy to its studio in Shanghai, China, where the project was underway. The project provided unique challenges for the producer, who had to overcome team cultural and communication problems, scheduling challenges, asset management issues, and organizational hurdles that arose when the team grew into the largest in the company's history.

Tuesday, July 15:

Managing An International Remote Development Team by Max Meltzer
There are inherent difficulties in managing a team that's thousands of miles and a half-dozen time zones away. For starters, you might not speak the same language, and you're starting your day as the remote team is watching the sun set. Given these difficulties and myriad other organizational challenges that inevitably crop up, it's a wonder that a production could bear the strain. But many games have been made this way, and the dispersal of game development talent around the globe means it will only become more prevalent. Here's are battle-tested strategies for managing foreign teams that will make the process proceed more smoothly.

Wednesday, July 16:

Extreme Game Development: Right on Time, Every Time by
Thomas Demachy
Extreme Game Development (XGD) is an agile game production method based on the popular software development method Extreme Programming (XP). XP is not simply another fancy development method; it focuses instead on the one truly crucial issue: creating a working product. Titus Interactive Studio in France is launching two game projects using XGD, and here's how the head of the studio plans to roll out XGD to his teams.

Thursday, July 17:

Goodbye Postmortems, Hello Critical Stage Analysis by Wolfgang Hamann
A cynical definition of the term "postmortem" might be "a common artifact of the game development process whereby the game industry documents the fact that everyone seems to continuously make the same mistakes." We should change this process and get rid of postmortems entirely. It's time to consider Critical Stage Analysis (CSA). CSA provides a quick, relatively painless process to find out what went right, what went wrong, what needs to be done to fix it, who will do it and by when.