It was a running joke about a decade ago when Blogs were actually popular that everyone had a political blog to espouse their crack-pot views on American Politics. As you remember, when I created this Blog, I did so with a charter I called "Contract With My Readers", wherein I promised to never include any sort of political commentary. Today, in true political form, I break that contract to draw some key lessons from software project management and attempt to apply them to the political process.
Budgeting:
Video games are enormous projects fraught with pitfalls and unknowns. Similarly, government plans are enormous projects fraught with pitfalls and unknowns. At the start of any new game, or piece of of legislation, one of the primary questions a team has to ask is "how much is this thing going to cost." Both governments (or the CBO) and game producers then dig into their team's collective experience and try to come up with an estimate for the cost.
The difference? Any game producer with a modicum of sanity is going to utilize a
conservative (in the fiscal, not party sense) estimate, more in line with the "worst case." The goal is to come up with a realistic expectation that errs on the side of
caution. Going over budget is (or at least should be) career suicide for a producer, or at the very least proof-positive that the producer failed and was not
conservative enough in their estimate.
The government side? Not so much. Looking at historic accounting for virtually every major government program has shown
massive under-forecasting of the costs. Of course, even with the non-partisan nature of the CBO, it has been shown that their "accepted practice" is not to give "worst case" estimates, but to try and hit the nail right on the head under expected conditions, something that never happens in the real world.
Common Sense Producers Solution: ALL bills should be required to have a "worst case" cost estimate along with the current estimate from the CBO. This estimate will cover what happens when everything bad that can go wrong does...because any experienced producer can tell you...it does. The problem with this is that the CBO is going to come back with worst case scenarios that will "scare" Americans away from supporting legislation, and no politician who likes his or her job could sign. Guess what? That's good! Because it'll then force the politicians to write legislation that actually
takes into account the worst-case scenarios.
Risks:
In a similar fashion to the above budgeting issues, all good producers are constantly maintaining a list of the "top risks" both before and during a project. These are fairly simple in format; They contain a description of the risk (Not enough Online Programmers), as well as a couple of ways that the team will mitigate the risk (Start hiring process, begin training an internal candidate, cut online features, etc...).
Common Sense Producers Solution: EVERY bill the government creates should have this section. It not only shows that the authors have thought about the risks and considered them, but have also created contingency plans and trigger points when the risks explode (which, again, they always do).
Reporting: Ahhh, the bane of every producer's existence. We spend a lot of time writing reports. A lot. Why then, if they are the bane of our collective existence, do we keep doing them? Because, frankly, they are important. Amongst other benefits, they provide a summary of problems and progress to the people who need to know. A studio head doesn't have time to wade through the minutia of status updates from hundreds of employees...they just need an overview of the progress and any risks or issues they need to be on top of.
Status rep0rts also force us to take the time to translate the technical mumbo jumbo in each discipline into language normal human beings can understand. When a programmer tells an artist that "he's ported the asynchronous animation blending code to the SPUs" it is most likely of little value to the artist. When a status report comes across his desk that says "Gavin's SPU animation system now means you can include 10 times as many animated characters in a scene", suddenly the value is immense. Can you imagine if all our bills had plain-language status reports, not only telling us what is in the bill, but "how it is going" now that it is enacted?
Common Sense Producers Solution: I have to do damn status reports EVERY WEEK OF MY LIFE. The least our government representatives can do is take some of the money that I give them and pay a junior staffer to do the same thing ONCE A QUARTER.
That's it. Nothing funny. Next week, amidst the usual banter, please check out my proposal to fix Social Security. For reals. Seriously...the last thing the internet should have done is given me a blog.
Ever wonder what happens when there is one, and only one impossible system-level audio bug that is keeping a multi-million dollar game from submitting? The answer is in this picture, where the one programmer with the expertise works tirelessly at his computer, while half a dozen high-powered engineers and production staff literally sit behind him to make him feel uncomfortable.
Not another one, you say! Actually, this is sort of the "good" antithesis of the previous image, where one senior engineer is giving a lesson to some new guys on the intricacies of profiling on 360 versus PS3.
A shot of the "dock", our open-air programmer workplace "funtacular." For those wondering, those pictures of teen sensation "Cody" and the gang are mine...I inherited them from our previous tech director. I, of course, actually pasted those on his wall back when that was his desk...which I later inherited. Karma.
Tip to future interns: Don't go on vacation for a week, or else this will be what your desk will look like when you return.
Finally, a random picture from a work lunch, where the gang discovered the World's largest piece of Indian food.
