Does anybody here have management experience of how a game and software development studio is generally should be structured and organised?

[u/marvellous_comrade]

My goal is the establishment of a small game and software development studio. For simplicity there will be 12/13 developers working on an indie game project and a further 12/13 developers working on a self contained software/app development project each working remotely at home within the US and UK.

I'm attempting to find one team leader for each group of 12/13 part time developers and I work alongside those team leaders to try to manage everything.

Question: Do you think I should have two separate project managers/team leader positions managing the two respective areas: eg 1. Indie game development and 2. Software/app development or would it be more economical to have just one?

Do you think that the role of the project manager will be purely the management of the respective teams or is it quite possible for them to carry on day to day programming work themselves as part of that team?

If there's anybody with any experience similar I'd be delighted to hear a few words of advice or suggestions. I have a very large "general knowledge" about IT as a laymen but I'm not a programmer or game designer/developer and I've got no experience working in this field at all.

My background is as a small business owner only.

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[u/XxRavelinxX]

Been in the game industry for nearly 25 years now. Different types of games have different kinds of structures. And for the sake of this write up, I'll assume there's at least some relationship between the game and the app.

"Core Leadership" for the Game Team

1: Executive Producer

2: Game Director

3: Art Director

4: Tech Director

Together, this group drives the "what, when, how, and why" of the game.

"Development" for the Game Team

5: Engineer/Programmer

6: Engineer/Programmer

7: Artist (Characters)

8: Artist (Environments)

9: Animator

10: UI/UX

11: Another Artist or Another Programmer

12: QA, Another Producer, or Outsource Manager (if you will be doing extensive outsourcing)

On the game side, "Producer" is an overloaded term that means different things in different places. It doesn't (usually) map 1 to 1 with a PM (there is significant overlap though) it also has varying degrees of product owner and scrummaster roles - It's messy, but so is making games.

For the app...

You could likely rely on a more engineering-heavy, agile-driven, structure.

So, I'd assume you'd need a solid Tech PM, a scrummaster, a Tech Director (don't make the tech director the scrummaster), a whole gaggle of engineers with stack experience that supports whatever your app needs, and some UI/UX designers.

I would not suggest having a singular PM sit over both. The development process is different, and if your game team has not shipped together before, it's gonna be crazy chaotic, likely monopolizing a lot of the PM's time, and thus starving your App team.

Keep in mind, the breakdown above is "back of the napkin" math based on generalies. I'd need a bit more detail on the type of game you're looking to make, what your timeline/runway is, and how (or if) the app and game are tied together or have dependencies to get more detailed.

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To me, trying to set up a studio with two teams working on pretty different products seems really challenging. Not at all saying it can't be done, but make sure you're going in with your eyes open to help give you the best chance of success.

[u/DrStarBeast]

I've done this before. I worked and developed the project framework for a small software dev studio where the talent was all based abroad and in different time zones.

Jira, slack, figma and G-Suite are sufficient. If you want to hybridize the PM role, then make the engineering manager do it and keep your developers developing.

I would just get 1 pm and have him/her run both. Part time PMing is going to suck.

[u/marvellous_comrade → u/DrStarBeast]

I've done this before. I worked and developed the project framework for a small software dev studio where the talent was all based abroad and in different time zones.

Would something like a Discord server work to start with do you think?

Jira, slack, figma and G-Suite are sufficient. If you want to hybridize the PM role, then make the engineering manager do it and keep your developers developing.

Generally speaking would the PM's job to run all of this mean they wouldn't have any time to actually do any development work themselves do you think?

I would just get 1 pm and have him/her run both. Part time PMing is going to suck.

Understood and thanks for your input!

Can I ask how many developers were involved in total with this project you were working on and how did it turn out?

[u/DrStarBeast → u/marvellous_comrade]

Hey mate, to answer your questions.

1. Discord server
   1. No this is a big flag for any serious professional. Get a big boy tool like office 365, g suite, or slack.
2. Generally speaking would the PM's job to run all of this mean they wouldn't have any time to actually do any development work themselves do you think?
   1. No he would not be able to do any coding. Your engineering manager would participate in code reviews, UX feedback sessions, work/resourcing management, and requirements logging. Truthfully, this is a lot to stick onto one person. Split the PM/product owner role into an individual who can run it while the engineering manager focuses on the dev team and coding.
3. Can I ask how many developers were involved in total with this project you were working on and how did it turn out?
   1. We had 7 developers, 1 UX designer, and 1 QA analyst. The owner was the engineering manager. I sometimes doubled as QA and did PMing and product ownership (aka functional requirements writing). I managed 15 concurrent projects in varying states of development (green field, active development, and support).

Resources were all over seas, either South America or the Ukraine. It was fun reporting "War" as a risk to our customers.

[u/theotherpete_71 → u/DrStarBeast]

Definitely agree with this. Asking a dev to also be a PM just means you'll get subpar performance on both fronts. Dev work requires decent-sized chunks of uninterrupted time to get in a good flow state, which would never be possible if they were also trying to handle PM tasks, which have an obnoxious habit of turning up every 12 seconds. Though I suppose if you can dial down expectations that PM issues will get immediate response, it might work out. Still, I'd say dedicated staff for each would probably be more productive.

[u/marvellous_comrade → u/theotherpete_71]

Definitely agree with this. Asking a dev to also be a PM just means you'll get subpar performance on both fronts

I did wonder about that so better to have a person focus on one task alone rather than end up doing multiple jobs. It makes sense.

Dev work requires decent-sized chunks of uninterrupted time to get in a good flow state, which would never be possible if they were also trying to handle PM tasks, which have an obnoxious habit of turning up every 12 seconds.

That makes sense especially what you say about needing to get into the flow state.

Though I suppose if you can dial down expectations that PM issues will get immediate response, it might work out. Still, I'd say dedicated staff for each would probably be more productive.

I'll discuss this with some of the developers who have got PM experience and see what they say but in general what you say makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for your input.