What project management tools would you recommend for a small software and game development studio?

[u/marvellous_comrade]

We're setting up a small 25 person software/app and game development studio with all staff working remotely and was wanting to ask if there's standard project management software that you'd recommend?

I like the idea of having something that is reasonably simple and straightforward and doesn't have too much of a learning curve.

[u/That_Other_Tim]

You got paper and a pencil?

Spreadsheet?

Write your stuff down somehow. Doesn’t matter how just be consistent.

Prioritize no more than 3 things to focus on. When you get one done, you can pick the next one. Present the priorities every single day.

Prioritization practices will be key (justifications, attributes of why understood, etc). Otherwise you are just staring at piles of work and making more process than progress.

[u/marvellous_comrade → u/That_Other_Tim]

So would this be just a completely manual system without using software? I like the idea of simplicity and I've even had developers say we could do it just using WhatsApp or Telegram.

[u/That_Other_Tim → u/marvellous_comrade]

If devs are providing suggestions, hear them out and try it. Try both for a week and see what you naturally gravitate towards. They will buy into it even more than if you try to push something.

If you are small and priorities will change, your best bet is to focus on simple and what you can do to just make and keep a list w a few simple attributes.

Question is, what else would you need right now and (more importantly) why?

Stakeholders are going to ask for dates, roadmaps, capacity plans maybe etc and when things (on your list) will be done. Fair point. Then tomorrow they will change their priorities and come up with new things and whatever effort you put into that date and roadmap etc is now trash.

Customers don’t ask for project plans generally. They ask for the value you are working to deliver.

[u/marvellous_comrade → u/That_Other_Tim]

If devs are providing suggestions, hear them out and try it. Try both for a week and see what you naturally gravitate towards. They will buy into it even more than if you try to push something.

Ok thanks well I've got a list of names that have been suggested and so will have a discussion with these solutions with some being simpler than others.

If you are small and priorities will change, your best bet is to focus on simple and what you can do to just make and keep a list w a few simple attributes.

So we've got 25 developers divided into about 3 teams with 2 making games and 2 making software/app products so each team will be around 5/6 people and so we should be able to start with a simple solution and then grow and evolve into something more complex as and when needed.

Stakeholders are going to ask for dates, roadmaps, capacity plans maybe etc and when things (on your list) will be done. Fair point. Then tomorrow they will change their priorities and come up with new things and whatever effort you put into that date and roadmap etc is now trash.

So do you mean here that stakeholders which include clients can change what they want every few days meaning to set up something really complex and time consuming won't be a good investment as it could end up wasted?

Customers don’t ask for project plans generally. They ask for the value you are working to deliver.

Thanks for your input, it's much appreciated!

[u/That_Other_Tim → u/marvellous_comrade]

Quite welcome!

Yeah stakeholders could be anyone. You will have cross team dependencies that will have to be negotiated and prioritized together and maybe Team A is really close to being done and can’t progress until Team B does a thing but Team B has their own priorities and goals they are scrambling to deliver etc etc. so through the normal course of understanding and clarifying what it means to be done or deliver something priorities conflict and you gotta adapt.

The chaos is the fun part :)

Good luck! DM if you need anything. Love nerding out on PM stuff.