Being a lead in a creative team environment requires many ears and eyes. It’s important to listen to those around you, hear their proposals and requests, while still always holding true to what is expected from stakeholders, our scope and overall velocity. One of the most important aspects of being a good Lead in the concepting phase during development is to make rational and effective decisions.
This topic requires rational decision-making skills. In the very beginning, I thought this was an incredibly difficult skill to learn for those whose personalities are less direct and more reserved. Nevertheless, seeing this as an incredible learning opportunity, I started my journey onto learning this skill, throwing myself into situations I’d learn and struggle the most with.
Time and experience eventually brought confidence and, in a way, your thinking process starts to adjust to what has proven to be effective in the past. However, all of this could never have been achieved if I wouldn’t have done proper reflection and iteration upon previous processes.
The concepting phase of Child of Lothian was hectic, as it brought many uncertainties and questions. Based on my previous experiences at Breda University of applied sciences, I made sure to prepare and fill in Decision Matrices spreadsheets in Excel during decision-making meetings with other developers. As a lead, I found this very useful as it rationalized every decision made on paper and included all developers who were part of this process.
Image 1: Decision Matrix used for making decisions during the Concepting Phase of Child of Lothian. This example shows possible Target Audiences.
However, based on feedback gotten through Sprint Retrospectives and one-on-one sessions with the Design team, I’ve come to the conclusion that it brought many problems and blockers to their work. Problems that arose questions and even more uncertainties. ‘It looks good on paper, but how will this tie in with the existing core game loop? How can we prove it’s an effective solution to a problem?’
It turned out that the Decision Matrix should be replaced with a different method. Something that would open up creative possibilities. So from here on I decided to switch from a formal meeting and Excel Spreadsheet to a more informal meeting with an online whiteboard (Miro). We called these Creative Meetings.
Image 2: Miro board used for making decisions during Creative Meetings in Pre-Production phase. This example shows decisions made around the sling and its projectile, fail state in our Demo build and collectibles.
During pre-production, these meetings seemed to have a better effect on the decisions that were being made. More creativity was thrown into the mix and we worked together towards achieving a great game loop. Nonetheless, we still experienced hiccups. I started to reflect and gather feedback from my peers once again.
The issue which was blocking us was hesitation.
'How will we know if it’s going to entertain the players? How much dev time will this take up?'
Questions that left us thinking and doubting. This doubt led to moving meetings to a later date after doing more in-depth research. However, this can lead to blocks in development and uncertainties among team members. I had to do something about this.
This is when it clicked. I am a team-oriented person. I like working together and achieving a goal which can be worked towards with multiple people – my core values are set on making decisions with the team, so everyone has enough and fair input on those decisions made. However, now I serve the team as a lead. If decisions are failed to be made with the team members, the lead takes responsibility over this and makes the final call. Upon review by stakeholders and producers, the decision is then final.
The call to action required me to set my foot down. Even if this meant making the wrong decision, it is still better than no decision at all.
Image 3: One-Pager document used to document agreed-upon decisions. Used throughout all phases of development, but emphasized during Production phase onwards.
The past couple of months I have actively been learning to set my foot down and make decisions. It still requires team input, but if there are smaller decisions to be made, it’s important to take time and make those decisions myself along with the relevant people. This way, there are less meetings, but better alignment.
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