Management structure

Written in response to musing about whether or not Valve’s ‘cabal’ structures were useful, or just a quirk of the company.

Management isn’t generally the problem, the problem is that after a certain point the structure starts to exist to serve the structure, not the needs the structure was originally supposed to serve. All organisational structures, be they flat, tiered, cabals, whatever, are there to facilitate the business needs. Generally a games developer needs to make better games, faster and cheaper. When you spend all day in interminable meetings because your hierarchy is a bad fit for what actually needs done, then communication overhead means that more time is spent talking about what should be done than is spent on doing it, you’re not serving the business. When you spend a bunch of time flitting between tasks because it’s not clear whether you should be doing something or someone else should, and end up doing the same thing as someone else while other vital things fall between the cracks, you’re not serving the business.

All different sorts of management can be fine, great even, as long as everyone remembers that at the end of the day it’s supposed to make the work go better, not worse. It doesn’t matter whether it’s top down, bottom up, side to side or shaken not stirred, as long as it’s making it easier for real, productive, money-making development to happen. Remember those Time and Motion studies? I think that’s what we need sometimes – someone from outside to point out when our structures are getting in the way rather than helping. It’s very hard to see when you’re in the thick of it; you get a sense that something is wrong, that this madness can’t be the best way to do things, but not how to fix it.

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Last modified: February 06 2020.