How was your transition from Dev to Producer, do you like your new job? Do you miss tinkering with the Caterpillar or do you enjoy running around with a stick and pock mark and the other devs, while demanding progress?asked by RufusUltra

Oo. My transition... my transmission is fine. Have you got yours checked out lately?

My what? I walk.

Oh forget it.

I power walk! I power walk every day. 30 miles!

30 miles? That's why you have calves like steel.

30 miles up and 30 miles down. Why do you think I'm still up?

Nice. No the transition between dev to producer has ... it's still ongoing. I think I've been a producer now for three months, maybe ... actually no, more like four months...

It feels like longer.

It feels like forever.

It feels like years!

Thanks.

I have that dread when you walk over, it's like ...

That's right. "Get to work"

I'm like "No!"

"No keep ..." Oh no, he had ...

"Is there a Jira?" And then you'll be like ...[Randy holds up a piece of paper with "Jira" written on it]

What? There is a Jira sir! Yeah! Jira!

You had to do that didn't you? He does this all the time. He'll be like "Hey there's this bug: have to do." And I'm like "There's no Jira: can't do it." And he'll be like "Jira!" And I'll be like "You... fine." No, no. Then I'll try to get out of it and go "Does my lead know?" And you'll be like "Paul"...[Randy holds up a piece of paper with "He does know" written on it]

Oh, he knows!

And then Paul's like [thumb's up] and I'm like [sigh] "Fine, I'll do it."

Yeah, no, because, like... there always a problem in development, right? Where people will... since I come from a dev background and I'm transitioning over to Production it's kind of like that whole thing. Dev's will be like "I'm not doing anything a Producer says unless they have a Jira and okay finders document". And I'm like "Yeah,I know these tricks. I've done them myself!" It's like ... kind of like ...

You've turned against us. You're a spy.

I'm a pretty open spy though.

Your tactics of spying needs a little work.

So, yeah, no, it's like the transition's still going. I really do enjoy it. Of course, there are some things, like I hate scheduling. Oh my god, I hate scheduling so much. Because it such...

Oh yeah.

In this type of environment, to schedule for such... it's an asynchronous schedule because you guys are working on something completely different; the designers are working on something completely different.All the games that I've worked on before have all be regular MMOs or more standard MMOs, to where you have a zone and then you have all the quests that you are planning, you have everything else, so you have the progression. And you knew... we knew exactly what the progression was from level zero all the way to whatever level cap was. So it was easier for us to look at it.And I've always done production work in my other roles too because I've always been a Designer/Producer on some things. I've always made my own Jiras and stuff, I always had my own features that I was in charge of, so I've always run that.And when I was at 38 I think I had a team of nine people and I was the Scrum Master for the team, and I was running the features. I was in charge of the quest tool which, if anyone know about tools, like the quest tool itself touches everything in the entire game because everything is based on that. Then I had localisation stuff, I had some dialogue stuff, so I've always kind of done production stuff I've just never actually made it really official.

Yeah.

So it's... kind of... it's different. Different mentality: I'm still trying to... I still have that inner battle right now of like dev versus producer. But it's also cool because I can go into meetings with you guys and... like one of the producers, when we were talking about the doors... the doors meeting, right? We're talking all through the logic and everything like that and I understand it because I've done this before and I've been a dev for a while, but the other producer he's like "I'm lost." And I'm like "We're just talking about doors." He's like "Oh".

And then I think Sean walked up and he like, "Just made a door!"

Yeah, no, right? But even still I was able to talk logic and I'm able to give input and stuff and help facilitate that. So I have an idea of what the development team needs, granted I'm still working on it too because they always hit me up "Hey I want to do this, I want to do this!" "Okay." Like the other day you... I saw you, I'm in a meeting and I see Abent just pulling a whiteboard and I'm like... I'm like "Hold on. What are you doing?"

I needed to schedule things.

So then we started working on that together and putting the task up there and then making sure that at least the people he need to work with, which right now you are working with Patrick a lot, so make sure that they're always insync and they have one information and who's doing what task. Since they don't necessarily have same visions... visibility that I do.

We'll have the high end Jiras and you'll assign us like, "Hey make the seat" but there may be a bunch of things under that where I'll have to work with Patrick and go "Alright, we have to plan this out of how are we going to do this. And to do we need any resources?" Like Kirk I needed some stuff him to do so we could get the new item stuff working. Alright so that's another task, that's a task, that's a task. And it's just like...

Actually to be clear. So a producer is never development's boss.

Yes.

Their job is to facilitate and get... like to help them out to make sure they are not blocked so they can do their job. Because some people, they have the ... that are outside the game industry they have notion of, "Oh, the producer's the boss" and I'm like, "No, the Producer is never the boss." Every time I make task it's based on discussions with Paul and you and the rest of the team. And being like, "Okay, I'll set up the meeting" and I'll be like, "Alright guys, this is the goal that we want to do what are the tasks... what do we need to do with it?" And you, Paul and everyone else are like, "Okay, well to do that we need this, we need this, we need this." Then I start taking the notes and I start jotting down all that stuff. Then I turn those notes into actionable items so that way you guys can do the work. But you guys already have a better idea of exactly what takes to do that work. I just try to make sure that work is visible to now a larger audience that way other people can understand what you guys are actually working on and doing.

And to track it. "What are they doing?"

Yeah. Mostly communication, tracking.

"I have no idea".

Stuff!

Stuff.

They're doing stuff. And things.

We're making stuff work. With more stuff, well...

You keep breaking stuff.

You have to break it to make it.

Nice. I see the disapproving look by Hennessy over there. You saw that? He was like "Aw you people... "

You mean QA buddy buddy? I...

You have him on speed dial.

Pretty much on my speed dial now.