When working on timelines, how do you account for the unexpected? I imagine game development timelines would have lots of interconnected dependencies and a delay in one track of work might hold up another track. Do you just build in extra time for the inevitable issues that come up? Are certain tracks of work more predictable than others?asked by jmack

Fantastic question and a good producer question as well. Yes, I would say what this comes down to is the more comfortable you are with the team and the decision makers of your team will help kinda guide this. For me, for scheduling a big part is try to capture as much as I possibly can. Right so, it's one thing just to say, you know, you talk to an artist or a developer and you say how much time is X going to take and they'll say five days. You go, great, five days. Throw that in there but there are some things that go around that like, does that five days include just work, desktime, no meetings, cranking through work. Does that include iteration with your lead, with your supervisor, with, you know, our entire stakeholders...

The art director, Chris...

That's right. Does it include any kind of other buffers we might need in any other independent connections and if that's the case then yes, that's the five days I schedule and then we can schedule the whole thing out that way, if we understand our mass amount of work. Like you said, when we're not necessarily R&Ding and we're kinda in predictability, as much as that word isn't a real thing, it's a thing we try to use, you can get a little better understanding. Once you understand your team, once you understand the decision maker process, once you understand the dynamic and the dichotomy of your group this becomes a little bit better. I think the quote goes: A battle plan goes out the window after the first shot is fired....

Yeah, after first contact with the enemy.

Yeah, so every plan does go out the window and as producers our job is to iterate with that plan and those ideas and predictability is a word we don't get to enjoy much in game development. In any entertainment creation, I mean we're not necessarily doing something new but when you're trying to do new stuff you don't necessarily have a business model to follow.

Yeah, even if it's just new for the team, new for the people doing it. Actually one of the things you said is a really important point to make, that a lot of people have the impression that, oh, you sit down at the beginning of a project, you lay out your budget for the entirety of the project, you lay out the schedule and then you just sit and you track against that. You're in your ivory tower somewhere and you kinda survey the battlefield...

You don't talk to anybody, you just sit there and watch.

It's much more like a World War II sergeant throwing a grenade at the front line, you know, that kinda thing. It's much more moment to moment, I think.

For sure, you know as much as I think we want to be predictable as producers are and scheduling, budgeting, it's just very hard to account for that. So, its a lot of work, a lot of iteration, a lot of communication, and a lot of understanding in how the plan can move. So, once you understand all the players that are involved you can - you know, once I started doing schedules on projects on things I've done in the past, I've done it a few times or I've worked with the same group multiple times, that helps a tremendous amount. Like I know, Tim always does this, Ashley always does this and Fred always does this. I know some of their quirks, great quirks that make them awesome at their job, and it helps me plan better as a producer. So, I hope that answers your question. That's a great question.