As we've already mentioned many times before, producers need to have a clear vision of how the development is supposed to go. As a producer, you always need to be looking ahead, planning for the future. Scrum and Kanban methodologies can help you with this goal, but they won't take you all the way. You can't prepare for everything, but this doesn't mean that you should not try. Let's go over some of the things you should always plan for ahead.
Breakdown of the Game: Go over what you're actually planning on delivering. Breaking down your project into small chunks can be helpful here.
Estimating the workload: How much work is there to be done? Estimating the workload is necessary if you wish to make accurate schedules.
Uncovering risks and mitigating them: What are the potential internal and external risks that you may encounter, and how can you avoid them as well as possible? Production risks are a major thing to consider when planning, so much so, that we'll look at this topic more closely during the next lesson.
Budget and cost-efficiency: Make a plan for the budget at the very beginning. This doesn't need to be 100% accurate at this point, but you need to make an estimate especially if you wish to work with publishers and investors. You should also consider ways in which you can do things in a more cost-efficient manner.
Managing the team: How many people will you need for the project? Who will they be, what will they do? Plan tasks for everyone.
Prioritizing work: What should be done and when? Go over what the most important tasks are and prioritize them before the minor tasks.
Setting clear, scheduled goals: Finally, scheduling. We talked about it a lot before, and it's good to mention it again just to stress its importance.
Scheduling is the backbone of all project planning, and you should always set clear goals and milestones for the project. This helps you track how the progress is going and motivates the team as well.
Always have a plan for these three factors, as they are the core of the planning process.
When planning a project, it's easy to focus on all the major things while forgetting some of the minor details. Of course, thinking about the workload and the schedule is extremely important, but this is important for every task no matter how small. Holidays, for example, eat away some of that precious development time. There are also other areas like software updates that you should consider; is your game engine or some other program soon getting an update that you could really use during your project? Should you stick with the current version or prepare for updating when the time comes? Many of these can technically sound like small things, but if many of them stack up, it can easily lead to a snowball effect.
Answer the following question
Planning is always a good idea. Plans help you prepare for surprising events along the way, but even the best ones don’t remove the risks altogether. Next, let’s take a closer look at the common pitfalls in game development.