Week 7: Cross-Team Communication

Silence is Death

Hey, y’all. Max, the project manager, here with the most recent production lesson I’ve learned. Recently (Thursday), members of the dev team and the marketing team sat down for a long overdue discussion on the state of collaboration between teams. I’m embarrassed to say I unintentionally set a tone that made a mediator necessary. Things ended up going over well, but the uncomfortable tension could have been easily avoided had stronger communication been facilitated between teams earlier. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s my own. But this isn’t about faulting anyone, it’s about finding a solution.

As we progress to launch (in three weeks, dear gods), we’ve added members of each team to each other’s communication channels. We need to be more open with one another; something we should have done from the start. Include every member on all activities to promote synergy between teams. (Can you tell I learned a bunch of terms and phrases in production roundtables at the GDC?) It’s since become much easier to get into contact with members of marketing, and vice versa. Granted, it’s only been a day (writing this on the day after the meeting), but increased momentum needs to be capitalized on.

The point I’m trying to get at is main takeaways we can all use in future projects. When working with marketing teams in the future: get them involved with every single thing. Marketing is starving for as much content as possible, and anything can be used to promote the game. Ask marketing to do the same. Constant communication between teams almost makes it impossible for miscommunication. Everyone is on the same page at all times, and nothing screams efficiency like borderline obsessive reiteration of something everyone has already heard before. Unified vision, shared goal, and all that motivational speaker stuff.

Developing a game is hard. At least it should be. (if it’s easy for anyone reading this please email me at [email protected], and tell me how). The goal of a project manager is to make things as smooth and painless as possible, and having little to no contact with your marketing team for weeks on end is the opposite of smooth and painless. It’s rough and painful. If you’re currently in a weird position with your marketing team right now: arrange a meeting, and break the silence. In the words of a respected mentor, “Silence is Death,” and the longer you don’t speak to one another, the deeper you’re digging your game’s grave.