[Gamasutra is partnering with GameProducer.net, a game production resource, for a series of Q&As named "Producers of the Round Table". The Round Table is a place for producers who work in game industry to present their opinions in response to questions. The most recent article in the series dealt with "getting coders and artists to communicate".

In this installment, which deals with programmer and artist communication, participants include Robbie Edwards, senior producer at Red Storm Entertainment, Ben Gunstone, production director at Stainless Games, Justin D'Onofrio, producer at Freeverse, and Frank Rogan, producer at Gas Powered Games.]

How do you deal with structuring your team in terms of different disciplines reporting to leads?

Robbie Edwards: Underneath the producer, we have leads for design, art and engineering for their respective departments within the team. We then break down the departments further into disciplines that are small groups of similarly skilled developers lead by a single workgroup coordinator. For the most part, these workgroups consist solely of one department, but in a few cases, they are cross departmental.

Ben Gunstone: On all of our games we have a lead artist and a lead coder. Ideally we also have a design lead as well but with the smaller download titles that design lead is normally spread across multiple projects. From there it is completely flat.

Our teams are smaller, though, than normal retail products, normally looking at two to three artists and two to four coders per game, so there isn't room for any more levels of hierarchy.

Our leads also spend most of their time doing their scheduled tasks and don't need to spend much time on team-management - mainly as the teams are so small that communication is so much easier. It's also helped by the fact that we always position team members together in the office. They are also supported by me and our assistant producer.

Justin D'Onofrio: While our current project calls for a smaller team, we still have a hierarchy in place. On the coding side, we have a network lead programmer, who reports to the project lead programmer. There's an assistant programmer who reports to both of these folks. On the art side, we have a 3D modeler, who reports to the creative lead (also the 2D artist). Both leads, and an assistant producer, report to me as producer.

That's in the office itself. Remotely, we have an audio engineer. He's considered the audio lead, and has as many of his own folks at his west coast studio reporting to him as needed. Also on the west coast, we work with an art studio, where an art technician reports to an art manager, who then reports to both myself and our creative lead.

Frank Rogan: We have leads for the traditional disciplines - engineering, design, art, animation, etc. - and those leads serve as both the discipline leads as well as in an advisory capacity with the producer for the project itself. It's a pretty traditional model.