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Feb. 25th, 2003 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walbournSo I'm continuing to have 'inverse milestone pressure'. My company is working on an XBox game for Microsoft, so we have to deliver it in stages to get paid for the development--this is standard industry practice. As such, there is a lot of pressure as the milestone date approaches as would be expected with any deadline.
Since I've been working on the development tools, however, as the milestone approaches I had better have been done with my particular part already. That means I'm doing more support and 'fire-fighting' as the milestone approaches or working on things for the *next* milestone which I have to sit on to avoid destabilizing the existing build. Historically, I've most been doing testing on milestone week...
Now that we are down to two production milestones--after that, its all testing and tweaking--I've got no tasks left on the tools--except for a few optional things that got put on the back-burner. As such, I'm helping out with the game logic development for the game levels themselves. I expected this milestone I would be pushing rather hard up until the last minute, but as it turns out I'm working on game logic that isn't due for this delivery. Now, that is not to say I'm complaining about not having to stress over the milestone, but it does make it a little strange when everyone *else* is stressing.
At my last job, I was part of a dedicated tools & technology group (in fact, I was the manager of the tools group, as well as coding) so I was totally disconnected from product pressures. It was a nice break, but it also was clear that lacking the shared experience of 'product crunch', there wasn't a lot of warm-fuzzies between my team and the actual game teams. I wonder if the 'crucible' of product crunch is required for any kind of team cohesion in this industry?
Since I've been working on the development tools, however, as the milestone approaches I had better have been done with my particular part already. That means I'm doing more support and 'fire-fighting' as the milestone approaches or working on things for the *next* milestone which I have to sit on to avoid destabilizing the existing build. Historically, I've most been doing testing on milestone week...
Now that we are down to two production milestones--after that, its all testing and tweaking--I've got no tasks left on the tools--except for a few optional things that got put on the back-burner. As such, I'm helping out with the game logic development for the game levels themselves. I expected this milestone I would be pushing rather hard up until the last minute, but as it turns out I'm working on game logic that isn't due for this delivery. Now, that is not to say I'm complaining about not having to stress over the milestone, but it does make it a little strange when everyone *else* is stressing.
At my last job, I was part of a dedicated tools & technology group (in fact, I was the manager of the tools group, as well as coding) so I was totally disconnected from product pressures. It was a nice break, but it also was clear that lacking the shared experience of 'product crunch', there wasn't a lot of warm-fuzzies between my team and the actual game teams. I wonder if the 'crucible' of product crunch is required for any kind of team cohesion in this industry?
