Producing technical yet passionate people Matt Priestley Senior Producer Who They Are Highly trained Wicked smart Sometimes introverted often eager In love with their craft Who You Need To Be ID: 445464
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Slide1Slide2
Wrangling Engineers
Producing
technical yet passionate people
Matt Priestley
Senior ProducerSlide3
Who They Are
Highly trained
Wicked smartSometimes introverted, often eagerIn love with their craftSlide4
Who You Need To Be
The consigliere
Detail man, store minder, politician on their behalfFamiliar with their cryptic languagePrecise & diligentSlide5
Bungie’s Engineers
40 brave souls, mostly generalists
Designated – not dedicated – as area expertsCulturally enthusiasticYou want a hot new unscheduled feature? Sure!
Eager to suggest cool ideas to design and art
Co-inventors of our production processSlide6
Halo: CE
Small company
Startup culture
Awesome and terrifying
Our Learning Curve
Halo 2
Engineers self-produce
No planned room for error
Little x-discipline planning
Painful resets & deadline crisis
Hurt the team
Halo 3
Producers get involved
Classic waterfall + buffer + ad-hoc
Much improved communication
Still crunchy, but better
Halo 3: ODST
Short timeframe labor of lovePlanned mid-game stabilityStatistical bufferingWe nailed our CC and ZBR targets
Halo: Reach
The good habits learned in ODST
Strike teams for x-discipline production
Stability passes linked to internal play tests
We’re learning!Slide7
EstimatesSlide8
Two Weeks
Sometimes it’s easy. Just copy/paste a cost from a similar feature
Sometimes it’s notA problem unique to engineering. You know what you have
and what you
want
, but not how to get there.
Even if there are examples elsewhere in the industry, their estimates only apply to
their
tech, not ours
Avoiding one-off features is partly why engineers love good architectureSlide9
Iterative Clarity
We walk through the questions they’ll eventually ask themselves
How do we break this down?What’s your first step going to be?
Ok and then what?
How are you going to do that part?
“Could you help me understand this better?”Slide10
Pitfalls
Itemizing is a natural engineering habit, but some personalities make it harder
Overly-eager
That’s like 30 minutes
I’ll just work the weekend
I can do way more than
that
Overly-vague
Perhaps a month?
I don’t have time to explain this
It’s done when it’s doneSlide11
SchedulingSlide12
Halo 3: Waterfall
Bungie production was still inexperienced at the start of H3
Waterfall seemed appropriate at the timeWe hit our dates, but engineers weren’t satisfied
An engineer couldn’t say “Yes” to a clever idea without risking crunch
Designers and artists were starved for feature iterationSlide13
When Will I Get My Feature?
Producers like to make promises. Waterfall provides a framework to do so
“Your feature will be built by August 12th
”
Without promises, dependencies become nightmarish
Sadly, waterfall promises drift as new work arrives
Agile takes things to an opposite extreme: handling surprises but discouraging long-horizon dates
Bungie looked for a compromiseSlide14
Why Are We Slipping?
Etc…Slide15
ODST: Statistical Buffers
Bugs, PTO, meetings, new features, paternity, leadership. They all diminish availability
But per engineer this is quite predictable!Eng A gets 20% surprise work
Lead B spends 35% of his day in meetings
We add statistical buffers
per engineer
to each milestoneSlide16
Standard vs. Statistical Buffer
Statistical Buffer
Per engineer
Measured & adjusted
Not just slop
time;
headroom
for cool ideas
Not an accident! We
plan
to use every drop
Standard Buffer
Per team or feature
Usually a guess
Safety net for when schedules go wrong
Nobody wants to use it but everyone inevitably does
Vs.Slide17
A Note on Slip
Tracking per-person buffers suddenly gave us a naïve measurement of “productivity”
Culturally we had to decide whether this was healthyHappy “walkup” vs. sad “slip”
It’s valuable to know when an engineer is trailing behind
But is that really the role producers should play?
At the end of the day we closed our eyes to this data and decided it was an internal engineering matterSlide18
IterationSlide19
Communication Takes Work
Iteration stems from communication
Bungie enjoys an open floor plan, but it’s still an effort to keep people talkingDevil’s bargain: “meeting purgatory” or lose touch?Slide20
Halo Reach: “
Strike Teams"
Virtual product units Engineering + art + design + productionFocused on getting one
feature “all the way done”
Less a status meeting; more a show & tell
A way to talk without taking our eyes off the game
In-engine results are what matter
Expectations are short-term and clear
Peers make commitments to one another
Producers track the work and help coordinateSlide21
Scheduled Iteration
Paper plan
Email
Kickoff mtg.
Bugs & polish
Play test
Strike team formed
Coding first pass
Offset design / art
Strike team
collaborationSlide22
Bug Smashes
“Milestone 7”Slide23
PrioritiesSlide24
Cake vs. Pie
Area
Feature
Priority
Engine
Multi-threaded
game loop
P1
Engine
Havok
version x integration
P1
Graphics
Shader
creation tools
P2GraphicsSplitscreen performanceP1
GameplayExplosion radius controlsP2Gameplay4-way co-opP1UICakeP1UIPie
P1Slide25
Priority Needs Constraint
Area
Feature
Priority
Engine
Havok
version x integration
P1
Graphics
Splitscreen
performance
P1
Gameplay
Explosion
radius controls
P2
Gameplay***Surprise new feature!***P1UIPieP1Slide26
Bungie’s BacklogSlide27
The Shopping ListSlide28
Three Day Work WeekSlide29
Implicit PrioritySlide30
The Big PictureSlide31
So In Summary
Passionate engineers who want to say “Yes”
A process that fits their cultureUsing Waterfall at the project level……statistical per-person buffers…
…and Agile from day to day.
Trying to do better each game
Strike teams, open floor plan, custom toolsSlide32
Questions?
Holy %#!* we’re making video games!
Matt Priestley
Senior Producer