This thread is about the work that team leaders do to keep their games alive. Just recently, I started noticing that I do a whole butt-load of work mostly by myself for various reasons. I've been thinking about it lately, and I think that I might be spreading myself too thin, and not making enough progress in my primary area (coding) because of it. Here's a list of the things I do: 1. I am a programmer and have written a large portion of the game's engine 2. I am the writer who creates the game's story (with feedback from my other teammates) 3. I manage and update the website 4. I administer the forums 5. I do work regarding human resources and recruiting (which is actually a lot of work) 6. I am the primary maintainer and organizer of all of our content (documentation, art, etc.) 7. I sparingly do my part in the art department, especially when we our art demand exceeds supply 8. I exist to provide a sense of direction for our team and the game I know that (successful) team leads are expected to do more work than everyone else, but I think that I may be over my head here. Especially since I am a graduate student and have an engineering job, and I can only do these things in my spare time. My team has recognized this in the past couple of weeks and a few have done their part in helping me with some of the administrative work I do so I can focus on programming, and I'm really grateful for that. But I don't want to force any of my work onto others simply because I'm too busy, you know? My game is a free project and people who join are expected to have fun working on it. I don't want to make someone who applied as a programmer begin to have to update the website, or otherwise do something that they don't enjoy. Right now I feel like I would want to either make a few clones of myself (impossible), or hire someone who basically does my administrative work with the site, forums, HR/recruitment, and general management. At one point there was someone like that on my team (he started as a programmer, got too busy for that and volunteered to help me do these sorts of things), but he has since disappeared due to personal issues in his life, and I've been hitting the grind ever since. Anyway, here's what I'm hoping we can discuss in this thread: 1. How much work is too much for a team lead to take on by himself? Personally, I'd prefer to only work on the code (and documentation of it), story, some art, and giving the team a sense of direction. I know that's all the "fun stuff" really (at least for me), but I don't just want to be a manager for my game. I want to be a contributor! 2. Should an overworked team lead begin delegating some of his load to others on his team? Is it acceptable to do so? Especially in my case, where I want everyone on the team to enjoy the work they do (since they aren't getting paid to do it)? Or should I continue avoiding this path like I have always done? 3. Should a game development team try to hire a manager/administrator? A person whose job is mainly to do all the management/admin crap that I just don't have the time for. But would someone even want to have such a position? The only thing I think they could gain is an inside look at how we work on our game. And obviously we'd need to place a high amount of trust in this person since they'll be given passwords to just about everything. How can you trust someone over the internet that you've never met? Thanks for any insight you can share here. And if I somehow manage to reduce my workload enough, maybe I can start posting more on these forums like I used to. [wink]

My recomendation is to lighten your load in a few areas. Firstly, try to recruit a web guy to maintain the site and administer the forums. You gain more time, they gain some work experience doing web stuff. Secondly, don't become completely uninvolved with the HR stuff, bt let someone else do the preliminary stuff at least. Let your lead artist take over the art hires completely and have someone else, prefurably another programmer, sift through programming hires. Only get involved when you're down to a few good candidates, or need to sign off on a job listing. Another thing you could do is have the lead artist take over management of the art assets, its his job anyways. Also, look for more artists so you don't have to do art at all.

Its perfectly acceptable, good even, to say "look guys, I've got too much to handle and I need some folks to help take over my responsibilities. We're gonna look for new reqruits to help with the work load, but in the mean-time I need some help."

I agree that recruiting and human resources is a ton of work. I have no idea what's an ideal amount of work, but I'll describe what I do as Xenallure's team lead:

1) Design all the gameplay, story, and look and feel of the game. This has included doing several pieces of concept art and writing more than 70 pages of description of various aspect of the game.
2) Write and maintain all the documentation including keeping track of all concept art and uploading everything to the ftp server.
3) Assign and explain tasks to artists and my assistant writer.
4) Critique the results of artists' and writers' efforts, which often involves me making a sketch or rewriting something.
5) Answer any questions the lead programmer has about how gameplay should work.
6) I'm not currently recruiting, but I've done a lot of it in the past and need to do more - I need a new concept artist or three, someone to make some webpage graphics so I can put up a webpage, and we could really use a male writer to balance the fact that I and the assistant writer are both female, but good luck finding a straight male writer who wants to write romance. :/

I definitely couldn't handle any more work than that, and I'm unemployed so I have tons of free time. Praise be for an experienced lead programmer who is also handling the recruitment of assistant programmers, and investigating which engine to use, and will hopefully give me some feedback on the design doc as a whole sometime soon.

Quote:

Original post by Roots I know that (successful) team leads are expected to do more work than everyone else,

That's your mistake right there. A successful lead leads the team, they don't try to do everything themselves. You should be doing the same amount as everyone else and if your other duties leave less time for coding then you do less coding.

Fixed that job spec for you....

Quote:

1. I am a programmer and have written a [SMALL] portion of the game's engine .... .... .... 5. I do work regarding human resources and recruiting (which is actually a lot of work) .... 8. I exist to provide a sense of direction for our team and the game 9. I help the team solve their problems and pass on my knowledge so that the whole team becomes better.

A spare time team lead ?!?! - but you hire people? I'd hire a full time team lead first thing!

Wow, some interesting responses already. [grin]

Ravyne
We actually already have a web development guy. He joined a few months ago and he's really good, but he has two jobs right now and barely any time to spare. So for the time being we're just waiting it out. He's really good from what I've seen in his portfolio and really set on designing a new site for us, so I want to give him the chance.

At one time I began thinking about assigning department leaders in code, art, and music, but we only have two composers so there doesn't really need to be a leader there I feel, our artists are all very busy and every single one at one point or another has disappeared for 2-3 weeks at a time, so I don't want to assign a lead there, have them disappear, and then have an art staff without a direction. And coding, well I have the most knowledge about our engine at this point I believe, so I guess I'd be the code leader anyway... Maybe I'll give a second thought to making department leads though.

sunandshadow
Thanks. [smile] I've heard mention of your game before and as a writer I'm interested in it as well. Don't know if I'll have time to look through such a verbose design doc anytime soon, but I'll try. Actually we don't even have a design doc ourselves (for better or worse... probably worse). But we do have a clear vision I think, and that's the important part. [grin]

Obscure
Really? I never thought that once. In fact, back in August when we hired a new graphics programmer, he did so much work I felt like he was starting to beat me on commitment, so I started going nuts and working my butt off trying to keep pace with him. [lol] I know that you are a seasoned veteran of the consulting industry, but do you think that the same rules apply to an independant, non-profit project? It's much harder to keep a team together when you're not paying them. [smile] Thanks for the advice though, I'll ponder it.

Oh yeah, and I do the task you listed as #9 a lot. I just forgot to mention it in my first post. [wink]

Quote:

Original post by Roots sunandshadow Thanks. [smile] I've heard mention of your game before and as a writer I'm interested in it as well. Don't know if I'll have time to look through such a verbose design doc anytime soon, but I'll try. Actually we don't even have a design doc ourselves (for better or worse... probably worse). But we do have a clear vision I think, and that's the important part. [grin]

Well, glad you're interested. [smile] I'm currently in the process of going from version 1.9 to version 2.0 of Xenallure's design doc, which will be a major revision breaking the existing content into several more manageable sections:

Intro
- Concept (with pictures!)
- Genre and Intended Audience

Technical
- Hardware
- 3rd party software
- Xenallure Features List
- - Appearance
- - Different Types of Gameplay

Characters and Story:
- The PC
- 9 RNPCS of 3 races
- minor NPCS
- plot points, plot chapters, endings

Art:
- hyperlinks to all existing art and collected source images
- written descriptions of all assignments to create new art

Music:
(ditto of art)

Apendix:
- Lists of all the objects in the game


Anyone may feel free to critique this outline if so inclined. I'm just starting to revise according to it, and welcome any input. [smile]

Your role as a team leader is to lead. What you did is the most common mistake of the fresh leads (in any fields) : trying to prove they are better than the people they lead by overworking themselves. That (again) is not your job

Quote:

Original post by Roots But I don't want to force any of my work onto others simply because I'm too busy, you know?

You have to understand that you don't make the game all by yourself. If you understand that not everything is your work, than you will not feel guilty for letting your team do their share.

Quote:

Original post by Vaipa Your role as a team leader is to lead. What you did is the most common mistake of the fresh leads (in any fields) : trying to prove they are better than the people they lead by overworking themselves. That (again) is not your job

Excuse me, but I didn't work my ass off because I felt I needed to prove I'm better than the others. I know and acknowledge that there are people on my existing team that are better than me in all aspects. The reason I worked so much is because I felt that I had to lead the way and set an example. Anyone can bark out orders to others, but I feel that a good leader does his share of the work as well.


And besides, I don't want to just lead my team, that's rather boring. I'm not the management type (though I've been told by people in real life that I'm good at it).

Quote:

Original post by Vaipa You have to understand that you don't make the game all by yourself. If you understand that not everything is your work, than you will not feel guilty for letting your team do their share.

I do understand this. In fact, I remind my staff all the time that this is everyone's game, and not mine. Yet I still don't feel comfortable handing out administrative work to them that does not fit their job description. Again, I want my team to enjoy the work they do, and not have to do this kind of work if they don't volunteer to.