作者：Marcelo Spiezzi Raimbault

游戏开发中最大的挑战并不是学习新技术，创造最佳工具或寻找乐趣。对于许多开发者来说真正的挑战和噩梦应该是如何创建并维护一支多产的团队。从逻辑角度来看，创造游戏只是正确遵循一系列步骤而已。然而游戏却是由人类所创造的而不是机器，所以情况也开始变得严重起来。

很多情况都有可能导致团队的失败。可能是个人的原因也有可能是组织的原因。理解为什么一支团队会遭遇失败比了解如何促成团队的成功更加重要。交流不顺可能会破坏团队工作：《Dark Side of Teams》便是一篇总结了可能导致团队失败的不同问题的优秀论文。而在本文中我将讨论这一论文中所提到的2大问题，即发生于学生所开发的项目《Cult》的开发过程中，并且这些问题也很有可能出现在任何游戏开发团队里。

模棱两可的目标

bdc(from gamasutra)

对于任何项目来说，模棱两可的目标可能是最大的问题。在开发阶段，我们很容易迷失在理念，过程，细节间并忘记真正需要做的一些事。我们必须确保所有团队成员都清楚并理解特定阶段的目标。当目标并不明确时，人们很容易将时间花费在一些不必要的任务中或浪费时间做一些不正确的事。

不幸的是我们经常会忽视这一问题。首先，领导者通常更熟悉项目理念并且总是会认为其余团队成员也有相同的理解。其次，团队领导者只会专注于自己的任务而未关注其它任务也未为它们其设定明确的目标。

对于团队领导者来说，如果他们未能提供给所有团队成员明确的目标便有可能影响他们对于信任的感知。团队成员可能会认为领导者在特定任务上不够信任自己所以才未明确任务。而缺少信任的团队便等于低产能的团队。

如果没有明确定义目标，团队便不可能具有自主性，而缺少自主性的团队将很难开发自己的路线并达到较高的生产力。

缺少紧迫感

截止日期！尽管这是一个会让任何开发者大叫的词，但这却是能够推动团队生产力的必要元素。我们都知道一款游戏是永远都不可能被完成。游戏将经过不断的完善，这也是为何需要截止日期的原因。

我们很容易发现一个成功的Kickstarter项目或一款独立游戏因为缺少足够的钱而未能完成项目。通常情况下，未明确开发时间是导致这些项目失败的主要原因。人们总是会基于紧迫感而行动。如果不存在足够理由为明天做某事的话，人们便可能不会在今天做这件事。我们总是认为自己跟别人不一样，即我们会尽快完成自己的所有任务。然而在团队项目中却不是如此，特别是在游戏开发的创造性环境中。如果不存在紧迫感，项目便不可能按照我们所期待的那样快速发展并在时间到达时具有预期的表现。

创造短时间的交付成果是在团队中保持高度紧迫感的一种有效方式（游戏邦注：就像敏捷开发和scrum开发过程便非常有帮助）。我们必须牢记基本功能还未完成，这是之后需要继续完成的功能。

而截止日期问题通常也是基于模棱两可的目标之上。也就是只有拥有了明确的目标，一个项目才有可能准时完成。即使你拥有许多短期的交付成果，但是它们却不具有明确的目标，团队也不清楚它们该何时完成这项任务，那么这一切也就失去了意义。

首先你需要明确问题

我们总是能够找到全新的“关于成功团队的10大诀窍”，但是关于团队遭遇失败的原因却永远都是一样的。提高团队生产力的最佳方式便是努力处理并消除阻碍它的问题。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Two simple factors that can compromise team productivity

by Marcelo Spiezzi Raimbault

The greatest challenge in game development is not learning new technologies, building the best tool or even finding the fun. The true challenge and nightmare of many developers is how to build and maintain a productive team. By a simple logical perspective, creating games is nothing more than following a series of steps in a correct order. However, games are made by people and not by machines (luckily!), and that’s when things can start to go really bad.

Many situations can lead to a team failing. It can go from the individual level to the organization he belongs. Understanding why a team fails can be much more important than knowing what makes a team succeeds. Communication that Damages Teamwork: Dark Side of Teams is a good paper that summarizes different problems that may lead a team to fail. In this blog post, I’ll talk about two big problems mentioned on the paper that happened during the development of Cult, a student project developed at The Guildhall at SMU, and that are likely to happen in any game development team.

Ambiguous Goals

I thought that was right… Ambiguous goals are probably the most critical problem for any project. During development, it is easy to get lost in ideas, processes, details, and forget about what really needs to be done. It is important that all team members clearly see and fully understand the goals for that particular sprint/milestone. When goals are unclear, people are likely to spend their time in unnecessary tasks or even waste time doing the tasks incorrectly.

Unfortunately, this problem may goes unnoticed. First, leads usually have a clearer idea of the project and may assume that the rest of the team also has this same comprehension. Second, team leads can focus only on their tasks and forget to give the proper attention and set clear goals for other tasks.

One important insight for team leaders is that not providing clear goals to all team members can even affect their perception of trust. Team members may think that tasks are not clear/available because the lead does not trust them enough for specific tasks. And a team without trust is a low productivity team.

Without clearly defined goals, there is no way for a team to be autonomous, and only a team with enough autonomy can develop its own path and achieve high levels of productivity.

The feeling of urgency

Deadlines! Although a word that can make any developer cry, deadlines are essential for a team tobe productive. We know that a game is never finished. Games can always be improved and that is exactly why deadlines need to exist.

It is easy to find a successfully backed Kickstarter project or an independent game that failed for not having enough money to finish the project. Usually, undefined development time is the main reason behind these failures. People mainly act based on a feeling of urgency. If there is not enough reason to do something for tomorrow, people probably won’t do it today. We may believe that we are not like everyone else, and that we do all our tasks as soon as possible. However, that is not how things happen in a team project, even more in a creative environment as game development. If there is no feeling of urgency, the project won’t move as fast as it could and may not reach the functionalities needed when the time comes.

Creating short time deliverables is a good way to keep the feeling of urgency always high in the team (Agile development and Scrum really comes in handy here!). Always keep in mind that an essential feature not finished now, is a feature that needs to be finished later.

Deadlines problems also build on top of ambiguous goals. Clear and precise goals are essential for a project to be timed right. It is pointless to have many short time deliverables if their goals are not clear and the team cannot tell when they were achieved or not.

First, understand your problems!

As a last word, there will always be a new “top 10 tips for a successful team”, but the reasons of why a team may fail will never change. The best way to increase a team productivity is to address and remove the issues decreasing it. (source:gamasutra)