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分享游戏制作人的7条团队管理建议

发布时间:2013-10-14 15:57:02 Tags:,,,,

作者:Samuel Rantaeskola

我曾在一篇文章中介绍制作人常犯的错误。与教育孩子一样,父母总是会告诉孩子不能做什么,然后再说应该做什么。所以如果我只介绍常见错误而不告诉大家应该做什么,意义不大。于是我又写了本文。

我们都听说过某些个人英雄主义的制作人把整个开发过程扛在自己肩上。这些故事往往是浸润了制作人的个人牺牲的血泪史。然而读者们往往看不到该制作人后来怎么样了:这位英雄不得不花一年的时间让自己从压力综合症中恢复过来,而他的团队因为群龙无首,这一整年都处于混乱状态。这个人可能为产品的诞生做出极大的贡献,但我很怀疑他能否维持团队的长期稳定。

制作是一个领导性工作,不是项目管理;不同的制作人有不同的领导风格。有些制作人喜欢在团队面是施展作为领导的权威,而有些人偏好更平等友善的合作方式。领导风格很大程度上取决于人员构成。但考虑到大部分工作室的员工都是年轻人,制作人确实应该学习一下年轻人喜欢的领导方式。

不幸的是,本文不是一份成功的领导人的工作手册,我在此分享的建议更多地是告诉你怎么想,而不是具体怎么做。制作人必须找到最适合自己的团队和处境的方案。

game develop team(from edge-online.com)

game develop team(from edge-online.com)

1、随机应变

不存在以不变应万变的方法。这意味着制作人必须非常灵活,随机应变。他们必须知识丰富,多才多艺,这样遇到问题时才不致于不知所措。我知道这是一条很难让人接受的建议,但要成功,这个心态是必须的。

2、成为合格的倾听者

制作人的职责是让团队中的不同人才各司其职。制作人不能只顾发号施令而不听取其他人的声音。因此,我坚信优秀的领导者也必须是一名合格的倾听者。除了错过有价值的信息,光说不听的制作人还会遇到这个问题:如果下面的人觉得自己不被倾听,就不太可能服从领导。

对于性格外向的人,比如我,这一条很难做到,因为滔滔不绝也是我们的思考过程。

3、信任他人

不被信任感会导致团队成员志气低下,工作力不从心。制作人必须尽自己最大的努力让团队成员相信,他相信团队中每一个人的判断。即使他内心还是有所怀疑。这也意味着制作人必须宽容错误,因为犯错是成长的一部分。制作人应该努力帮助团队成员从错误中学习,而不是一味的批评责骂。

4、成为好老师

制作人的最终目标是建立一个没有他本人存在也能正常运作的系统,甚至是一个让他本人变得多余的系统。当团队遇到他们觉得棘手的问题时,他们通常会首先找制作人去解决。优秀的制作人会帮助团队从问题中学习解决方案,从而让团队得到成长。这样,当下次遇到类似的问题时,团队就不需要过问制作人,自己就能解决了。

5、寻找长期解决方案

有些方法只能让团队暂时摆脱困境。制作人必须不断地评估处境,并寻找问题的长期解决方案。当制作人太专注于解决具体的问题时,他就会忘记修复长期问题。制作人必须依靠团队去解决短期的问题,而把自己的精力放在与团队一起制定防止“旧病复发”的计划上。对我本人而言,这是一个大问题,因为我总是忍不住去碰那些短期问题。

6、目标驱动型

制作人做什么事都应该是目标驱动的,而不是任务驱动的。当他们把时间花在详述达到目标的路径和分配任务时,他们往往忽略了团队更擅长做这些事。描述目标和帮助团队理解为什么要完成这些目标才是难点。这让我想到最重要的一点:制作人必须记住向团队解释为什么。例如,如果要在团队中普及新的工作方式,那么就必须向团队解释这种工作方式的目标是什么。如果没有解释,团队执行效率可能会很低,因为他们看不到那么做的价值。这样,制作人推广新工作方式就得不到应有的改进效果。

7、遵守规定

这几乎不需要说;制作人是团队的一员,应该与其他人遵守一样的规定。如果规定上班时间是早上10点开始,那么那个时间一到,制作人就必须出现在办公室里。如果团队为了赶截止日期而加班,那么制作人最好也一起。领导者不能指望团队比自己付出更多心血。

我在本文中提出的建议大多专注于制作人应该如何与团队打交道。我认为为了打造一支长胜不衰的团队,制作人应该做到以上几点。然而,具体情况不同,我不认为以上建议是时时管用的。为了处理某些情况,制作人有时候会背离这些建议。但他们应该努力使所谓的“某些情况”成为例外,而不是常规。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

7 Production Guidelines

by Samuel Rantaeskola

Previously I wrote a post about the common mistakes of a producer, which you can find here:  Top 6 production mistakes. As with raising children, it is easier to say what not to do than to describe the opposite. Nevertheless, just writing about the mistakes is not helpful unless you take a stab at describing the proper thing to do. So here we go.

We have all heard stories about the hero producers that carried whole productions on their shoulders. The stories include components of great personal sacrifice and extreme commitment. What is often left out is what happened afterwards, a hero that had to recover a year from the stress syndromes and a team in chaos because the engine was not available anymore.  This person might be the best solution to get something out the door immediately, but I doubt he is the best to build teams that function in the long run.

Producing is mainly leadership, not project management, and how to lead people differs from person to person.  Leaders that are comfortable on stage might execute a lot of their leadership in front of the team, while the ones that prefer intimate environments might want to work more with one-on-ones. The type of leadership required is also highly dependent of the situation. But given that most game studios consists of quite a lot of young people, this article in Forbes about how young people want to be led is a good read if you are an aspiring producer.

Unfortunately there is not a single recipe for successful producing, any advice I can share on this topic has to be focused on how to think rather than exact advice on what to do. Anyone taking on that role of producer will have to find the best solutions for the people and situation they are in. That brings me to the first point of the list.

1.    Adapt to the situation

As mentioned earlier there is no generic advice that works in every situation. This means that producers need to be very flexible and good readers of situations. They need to have a wide range of tools that they can adapt to the problem at hand. I know that this is a very hard advice to take in, but this mindset is required to be successful.

2.    Be a great listener

A producer’s job is to find the wisdom in the team and make sure that is used. They cannot do that by constantly broadcasting their own message and ignoring the voice of the others.  Therefore I am a firm believer that being a great listener is one of the most important traits of a leader.  Apart from missing the opportunity to gaining valuable information, the talkative producer ignores the fact that people need to feel listened to in order to accept leadership.  The following article explains this in more detail: Leadership & The Power of Listening.

For extroverts, like me, this is a tough advice to apply as speaking is part of our thinking process.

3.    Trust people

The feeling of not being trusted will bring down the morale of any person and will also make them less likely to take responsibility for their work. Producer must do their best to show that they trust the judgment of each and every one on the team. Even in instances where they have their internal doubts. This also means that there needs to be tolerance for mistakes as they are part of the growing process. The producer should strive towards helping team members to learn from their mistakes over throwing rants.

4.    Be a great teacher

The producer’s ultimate goal is to build a system that works without him, essentially making him redundant. When the team encounters problems that they are struggling with it is often tempting for the producer to take them on personally and ensure they are solved quickly. The great producer will focus his effort on aiding the team on learning from the problem so that they grow. Next time a similar situation comes up the team will be able to get through it without the assistance of the producer.

5.    Seek long term solutions

Short term thinking will never get anyone out of a hole for more than a short period. The producer must continuously assess situations and look for long term solutions when problems occur. If he is too engaged in solving the problem it is easy to forget to fix the problem long term. The producer must rely on the team to solve it and spend his energy on devising a plan in collaboration with the team on how to prevent it from reoccurring. This was a big problem for me personally when I was acting as producer, as my itchy fingers really wanted to be in on the fixing.

6.    Be goal driven

Everything producers do should be goal driven, as opposed to task driven. When they spend their time detailing the path to the goals and breaking that down to tasks they are usually overlooking the fact that the team is way more capable of this. The challenge lies in describing the goals and helping the team understand why it needs to be done.  This brings me to the most important point of this. Producer must remember to explain why to the team.  For example, if a new way of working is rolled out in the team it is as important to explain the goals of it as how it works. Without that explanation the buy in for the process will probably be low, as the team members might not see the value. On top of that the producer is missing out on the possible improvements that can come from the team if they are bought into the goal.

7.    Obey the rules

This almost goes without saying; producers are part of the team, which means that they should play by the same rules as the rest. If the agreed start time is 10 AM, then the producer better be there. If the team works late for a deadline, the producer better be there. Leaders cannot expect more of the team than from themselves.

Most of the advice I have given in this post is focused on how a producer should interact with the team. These are my views on how they should think in order to build a long term successful team. However, situations differ and I do not think you can follow these guidelines all the time. Producers will often have to diverge from them and get their hands dirty in pressing situations. But they should strive towards making these situations the exception rather than the rule.(source:gamasutra)


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