(WARNING: yes you guessed it! this is a rant)
Again and again,
I have to justify the in-existence of a release schedule for WOF to almost everybody I know, from friends who just care about me to friends who are software engineers themselves and who keep on wisely preaching me on how the mere existence of a schedule would auto-magically accelerate the development process.
I usually reply to those with proofs of the too many to mention 'professional' and super planned projects which end up being discarded with millions of $'s of losses because in the end, the schedule was not met anyway ...
Of course, if I had employees who's primary goal was to produce as few sweat drops as possible while still getting their salary at the end of the month then yes, schedules and deadlines and manages on top of managers hunting each other with dates would have been the way to go. And that is probably why this is needed in dinosaur sized companies where passion has no place, and people do the work with the salary as the ultimate goal, except maybe for the arrogant narcistic managers, sitting at the top, getting their fat salaries and bonuses, having a good life, and then just for the fun of it trying to push their company forward to show off in front of their friend managers, then preaching their employees about passion, with their own passion coming from the wrong place.
BUT we are an INDEPENDENT studio, we sweat and torment our brains every day and we do it because we want to, we need to and we want to make our dream game, and try to make it financially successful just to be able to repeat and re-repeat that. That is why for us, a schedule is just a hurdle in the way of a perfect game. It's existence will not make us work faster or better, because we already do that and only that!
In any case, it seems the world of dinosaurs is catching up and realizing that actually, its us who have been doing it right from the beginning and that they need to revise the way they develop: using a manager and a schedule ... suddenly it's starting to become hip to do things our way! yes ... agile development is the new hip way to do it, http://www.agilemanifesto.org/, and look there! IBM wakes up thinks so as well ... http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/03/04/IBM-promotes-agile-development_1.html stange? not to us!
Our and your dream game will be done when it's done! (because that's the only path to a dream game).
Fivemagics*
Again and again,
I have to justify the in-existence of a release schedule for WOF to almost everybody I know, from friends who just care about me to friends who are software engineers themselves and who keep on wisely preaching me on how the mere existence of a schedule would auto-magically accelerate the development process.
I usually reply to those with proofs of the too many to mention 'professional' and super planned projects which end up being discarded with millions of $'s of losses because in the end, the schedule was not met anyway ...
Of course, if I had employees who's primary goal was to produce as few sweat drops as possible while still getting their salary at the end of the month then yes, schedules and deadlines and manages on top of managers hunting each other with dates would have been the way to go. And that is probably why this is needed in dinosaur sized companies where passion has no place, and people do the work with the salary as the ultimate goal, except maybe for the arrogant narcistic managers, sitting at the top, getting their fat salaries and bonuses, having a good life, and then just for the fun of it trying to push their company forward to show off in front of their friend managers, then preaching their employees about passion, with their own passion coming from the wrong place.
BUT we are an INDEPENDENT studio, we sweat and torment our brains every day and we do it because we want to, we need to and we want to make our dream game, and try to make it financially successful just to be able to repeat and re-repeat that. That is why for us, a schedule is just a hurdle in the way of a perfect game. It's existence will not make us work faster or better, because we already do that and only that!
In any case, it seems the world of dinosaurs is catching up and realizing that actually, its us who have been doing it right from the beginning and that they need to revise the way they develop: using a manager and a schedule ... suddenly it's starting to become hip to do things our way! yes ... agile development is the new hip way to do it, http://www.agilemanifesto.org/, and look there! IBM wakes up thinks so as well ... http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/03/04/IBM-promotes-agile-development_1.html stange? not to us!
Our and your dream game will be done when it's done! (because that's the only path to a dream game).
Fivemagics*