PlatinumGames and Hansoft - the Road to Agility

PlatinumGames and Hansoft: The Road to Agility

By Jean Pierre Kellams, Creative Producer at PlatinumGames

with Jon Leslie, Senior Coach at Hansoft

@platinumgames #GDC15 @hansoft

Created by game developers for game developers

Revolutionizing the way people work together

Improves product quality and more importantly the team’s quality of life

GAME DEVELOPMENT CUSTOMERS

•  Global AAA Publishers •  Independent Studios •  Social / Mobile •  Outsourcers

FULL PRODUCT LIFECYLCLE MANAGEMENT

WHAT MAKES HANSOFT DIFFERENT

REAL-TIME Architected for speed

WHAT MAKES HANSOFT DIFFERENT

ROLE BASED Customized to what you do

WHAT MAKES HANSOFT DIFFERENT

COLLABORATION Tasks, newsfeed, chat & document sharing

Jonathan Ellis just now Fix zooming bug èCompleted

Raechel Lambert 5 mins ago Update release notes èCompleted

Salil Agarwal 8 mins ago Schedule client meeting èCompleted

News feed

WHAT MAKES HANSOFT DIFFERENT

RELENTLESS TRANSPARENCY Everyone sees everything

WHAT MAKES HANSOFT DIFFERENT

MIXED METHODS Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Gantt & Waterfall

WHAT MAKES HANSOFT DIFFERENT

DASHBOARDS & BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Actionable Agile Metrics

Creative Producer at PlatinumGames

Jean Pierre Kellams

Learning Curves Applying a methodology and transitioning a team to AGILE-like practices at PlatinumGames.

Who Am I?

Creative Producer on Scalebound •  First project as a lead producer

•  I’ve touched every PG developed game in some capacity, �whether it be localization, music supervision, or writing.

The first “foreign” employee of PG •  Worked with the team when everyone was at Clover.

•  Have developed a trust relationship.

A classic “Type A” personality: •  Volunteered for this gig (Dumbest move ever!) .

•  Want desperately to make a difference and make this team �the strongest they can be.

An expert on production: •  I haven’t shipped anything as a lead, so I may be entirely full of it.�

Feel free to think that.

•  That being said, in my previous life I’ve worked with more producers, creative directors, and teams than most do in a lifetime. I hope that I’ve learned the good and forgotten the bad.

An expert on AGILE: •  If I was, I’d be Jon.

•  I’m learning as I go, and I am learning that experts in methodologies often place the methodology before the result. Maybe that is good, maybe that is bad.

•  Ask me in a year. ☺

Who I Am Not

•  We’ve been using Hansoft for all of our projects, since the end of The Wonderful 101. �

•  Bayonetta 2 used Hansoft to “push to ship.” •  This was a Gantt/Waterfall model effort to execute on the

final parts of the game. �

•  Projects currently in production are using Hansoft to help shift to AGILE methodology. Today’s talk is my story in helping drive this progress.

PlatinumGames + Hansoft

Discovery through iteration. •  Quality comes from learnings.

Generalists, not specialists.

•  Our team are very adaptable.

Making the right decisions for the game.

•  The game always comes first, even to a fault.

Understanding What Makes Us Strong…

•  Lack of documentation. •  Open floor plan and ad-hoc decision making can make information sharing hard.

•  Iteration management. •  We almost never ship the first things we make.

•  Fear of future iterations can force waiting, which degrades the ability to learn.

•  Lack of methodology hurts our ability to schedule precisely. •  Ad-hoc scoping/backlogs.

•  Introduces some fuzziness to goal setting.

…And What Makes Us Weak

What Do We Do

• What we already do: •  Granular goals and decision making based on iteration.

• What makes us stronger? •  Iterations.

•  Committing just in time.

•  Embracing the unknown.

•  How do we overcome weaknesses? •  Making goals clearer.

•  Using methodology to guide decision making.

•  Tools to track goals that match this methodology.

•  Tracking capacity and iteration.

•  Early research into tools and methodologies: • MS Project – Waterfall/Gantt is incompatible with how we make

games.

•  Redmine – Good way to trigger backlog tasks or track bugs, not really good for other things.

•  Hansoft – Goldilocks software? �Multiple methodologies, but tuned for AGILE.

Introducing a Methodology

Adopt a standard methodology, find a tool that uses that

methodology, iterate on our usage of that methodology until it

incorporates our best practices.

The Solution

Early Project Milestone A Early Project Milestone B

Early Project Milestone C

Early Trial And Error Was Key

• What’s going on? •  This milestone only carried work

from our contract. The burndown looks great but since we weren’t used to the software it only captured a small portion of the work we were doing.

•  How did we solve this? •  We decided to load up all the work

into a milestone.

Learning Curves

•  Try, try again. •  We switched to loading everything into milestone. The curve looks great, but this

was a less than successful sprint, because our sprint duration was too long and we began dumping work off to another sprint.

•  How did we solve this? •  We needed to change how we approached sprints.

Learning Curves

•  Try, try again. Again. •  Our curve here is really flat because we decided to let our team add and remove

work during the course of a sprint, instead of just killing the work like we did in the previous milestone.

•  How did we solve this? •  We decided we needed more help.

Learning Curves

• We realized we didn’t want to keep working this way, �so we sought advice. •  Hansoft coaches are great places to go for this.

•  Explain where you think you are failing and they can help you to solve that.

•  The advice we got: •  Structure shorter sprints.

•  Look at who is working together and turn them into functional groups.

•  Let them name themselves and take responsibility for their work.

•  Gantt is OK for some sections.

Engaging Hansoft Coaches

Putting Advice Into Action

• We put the team on a weekly sprint cadence with clearer goals. •  Weekly build checks enforced responsibility and tightened feedback loops.

•  Build testing prior to the checks increased build stability.

•  The team was now predictable. •  We were able to predict success on individual sprints.

•  Individual team members had a much better idea of how much work they could handle.

•  But we still didn’t know how much work the team could handle!

Putting Advice Into Action

We Forgot Something…

We had “backlog style schedules”. •  Design would schedule what they’d like to think about when.

We had “allocation style schedules”. •  This environment artist is doing this task this week.

We had hybrid allocation/backlogs schedules. •  Sound would say that they need to be doing all this, but I’m not sure if we will, or

can.

We had Gantt schedules. •  Modelers would say you can expect my section to do this at this time.

Improving At Scheduling/Backlogs

• We had “backlog style schedules”. •  Design would schedule what they’d like to think about when.

• We had “allocation style schedules”. •  This environment artist is doing this task this week.

• We had hybrid allocation/backlogs schedules. •  Sound would say that they need to be doing all this, but I’m not sure if we will, or

can.

• We had Gantt schedules. •  Modelers would say you can expect my section to do this at this time.

And they were all made in Excel...

With WordArt!

With Word Art!

To Give You An Idea:

• We realized that we needed to create a backlog and try to bring everything into view. We had a semi-clear roadmap for doing this: •  Standardizing the format.

•  Prioritization discussions.

•  Migrating the format to Hansoft.

•  ...

•  PROFIT!

The Road To A Reasonable Backlog…

•  Using Excel was a conscious choice. •  Comfortable software to bring the �

team around to a new idea.

•  Mimicking some of the Hansoft�functionality in the sheet so the�team understands the information�they need to prioritize.

•  “Gantt”-style visualization to help�the more visually oriented leads�figure out how all the puzzle pieces�fit.

Standardizing the Format

•  Allowing for some of the extraneous information from previous scheduling formats, but structuring them in a way that it would help future migrations to the software also pushed new thinking.

•  However, we were still too reliant on average estimates and not relative estimates/points.

•  Prioritization and scoping discussions were key to both starting to determine relative size and milestone planning.

This Was A Good Baby Step

•  Designers at Platinum HATE cutting anything. •  Using the word cut might end with you being cut. ☺

•  But a designer’s “backlog” isn’t by definition reasonable.

•  Some tricks to trick your team into cutting early, scoping appropriately, and not ending up being the producer who threw water on a creative fire: •  “What do you want to see the most?”

•  “What do you want us to make first?”

•  “Compared to X, is this bigger? Smaller? About the same?”

•  “Can this X really by Y+Z instead?”

PROTIP: How to Talk About Priorities… …Without Talking About Priorities

This predictability, brought about by iterating on our process with the help of Hansoft coaches and using the software to visualize our understandings has led to deeper understanding of development by the team and a desire to track their work, and more importantly their progress, using the software.

How Did We End Up? Crazy Predictable

•  Average hours for the same stage in other projects are way down. •  Team direction and approach is easier to explain.

•  Schedule discussions have a tone of moving forward, �not the fear we had prior.

Profit!? Maybe!

• Milestones are still mini-backlogs. We could have a much stronger plan/master backlog. •  Transitioning to this now, but also aware of the right way to start the next project.

•  Our learnings are influencing new projects at PG to start with strong backlogs.

•  If we can get them to understand backlogs and velocity, prioritization will be easy in the future.

Where We Can Still Improve

•  Hansoft is a tool. You are the creator. •  The ideal curve is not always ideal.

•  Theory and methodology are secondary to results for your team.

•  You make decisions, data guides those decisions, methodology provides the framework for the decision. But you are the key.

•  Your team’s experience is your most valuable asset. Trust them before you trust a tool. The tool is there to help them.

•  Find places for constant improvement. •  The better you make things, the better you serve your team by creating an

environment for them to be the amazing creators they are.

•  Baby steps are the best steps.

What’s Your Point, Kid?

We Are Hiring! WE ARE HIRING! We are making incredible things that we can’t wait to talk about. We’d like to make them with you.

You’ll love Japan. Trust me. �

QUESTIONS?

facebook.com/platinumgames

@PG_JP

[email protected]�

Interested in Hansoft? Contact [email protected]

facebook.com/hansoftPM

@JonDavidLeslie

[email protected]