There have to be times where you know better: that person said six weeks, but they're forgetting that they've got this other thing coming up in four weeks, so we need to build this to eight, not six. Are there a lot of times where you have to do that? Is that part of the producer's responsibility, to take that information and then reinterpret it at times?

Ultimately, it comes down to trusting what the developers are giving us, but then always having a backup plan, right? I don't want to question every estimate that I get from a developer, because they know best. As a producer, my role is to get the information that I can gather and add some extra caveats to it, and as my risk mitigation process, for instance, add buffer. So there's been times where I've asked, are you sure this is just going to take one day? Because you have a meeting all week, or like the entire afternoon, so it's more like half a day that you actually have time for this. Like, yeah, okay, let's make it two, right? But I don't try to criticize or try and dissect what they're thinking this would take.

So you're talking about trusting the devs, and I just know from experience, you absolutely have to. But there has to be another layer of, I'm going to check over here, and we're going to check over here, because they're always very focused on their work.

I think it's just asking the right questions, right? It's a collaborative process. Game development is a collaborative process. Schedules are no different. You have to have the developer's input, absolutely, because they have to be the ones to tell you how long the thing is going to take. But then you also have to have the producer's context, and you have to have the lead who probably has more years of experience and can say, well, you didn't think about this. Oh, yeah, I didn't think about that, right? It's a collaborative process.