> Does anyone here have any successful stories
> about managing a team of hackers?

I did it a few times in the past, but not along the structure you have described. The common motivation factor I found in my projects is that the goal for everyone was the same: deliver a finished product. It's pretty obvious what this is in a paid job environment. But in a hobbyinst environment, what can be considered a finished product varies from person to person.

Most hackers have some existing pet project they would like to exercise in a different way or some new ideas they would love to experiment with; that's why your particular indie game is attractive. They see a match. You need to frame their contribution as a finished product, so that when they considered their contribution as 'done' they can either jump onto some other nifty idea they'd like to toy with or leave the project to pursue other projects.

For people you'd consider your core team, the finished product is the game itself. For transcient contributors a finished product might be the multiplayer lobby or the LUA bindings, something they can put into a separate DLL (along with test scripts, documentation, etc). You get the most when you organize and coordinate contributions on logical components boundaries; it's even better if the boundaries are enforced through formal interfaces (APIs, SDKs, etc). Contributions are more easily identifiable to single individual and not diluted across a vast code base.

As for project management I share the same view as others here: make incremental, measurable progress. I'm not convinced hobby projects should differ from commercial ones on that dimension.

Hope this helps

-cb

> Does anybody know any good web-based milestone software
> that could be easily implemented into our own site?

We have evaluated NetOffice ( Clicky ) some time ago on some non-gaming project and ended up with MS Project for compatibility reasons. I see that it has grown some interesting features since then. Alternatively, you can also check out Mantis ( Clicky ). We have a customer that uses it and is satisfied.

-cb

i think the best motivation would be to kidnap their loved ones and then hold them for an undisclosed amount of time until an undisclosed amount of work was done in a very disclosed amount of time.

response closed

I can remember several well written articles at http://www.joelonsoftware.com, and some of them where about work place satisfaction, and about completing projects.

There is also a very good book out there, called Peopleware.

Of course this is not an easy subject, managing people takes a lot of energy and experience is what will help you most. Also, it's very rewarding :)