Moving The Rock Blog

You know, it is easy for us to get really busy and not post a blog; Matt Fairfax pointed out in our associates forum the other day that it’s been over a month since our last blog. Shame on us.

It has been a discussion point the past couple of weeks on the importance of drafts. Anyone who has worked with me over the past five years or so has heard me use the phrase “move the rock”. This phrase simply suggests that you just need to do your best, close your eyes, and start somewhere. Even if you are completely wrong, you are still one step closer to being right. It takes some courage to be that wrong and share it with others.

I think of difficult, large, intimidating projects/tasks as if they were a boulder stuck on the side of a hill. Often, the hardest part is getting the rock to move. And once you have started, you need to keep momentum or the rock will roll back over you. OK, it’s cheesy, I know…but it’s true and one of the tenets that drive my decision making process.

My inbox is a mess. My todo list has three new priority levels: “Must do today”,“Critical”, and “Most Critical”. But it’s time to take a break and be an example of my own advice by typing this blog as fast as I can think…it’s a draft…so excuse the grammar issues and lack of images with quippy captions.

There’s so much going on here. We’ve been interviewing and hiring a lot of people. More on that in another blog.

We’ve also taken our project management to the next level and we are using both weekly sprints and Gantt chart/waterfall for horizon planning. It is great to see us improving with both of these practices. I’m hearing people have conversations that are forecasting issues three weeks in advance of the problem, which is exactly what you hope to hear. Every week we are discussing the current “critical risks” and people aren’t afraid to jump outside of their job description to step in and resolve them (yes, our new web developer is finding some extra time to do some sound and video work for the 1.1 launch...kudos). Some of the community members have noticed that we are working really hard to keep you informed on the bugs we gather and fix by posting in the forums…thanks so much for the feedback guys.

The push towards 1.1 final is going well. I’m acting as release manager and having a blast. We are currently in risk mitigation mode and spending our time working on bugs that fall in one of two categories: 1) those showstoppers that block us from release( i.e. “Ticket no. 1721: Current revision is severely leaking material/shader memory”) and 2) those that are low risk for generating new bugs but are still impactful on your experience ( i.e. Ticket no. 1580: Toggle netGraph keybind invalid”). Both examples are fixed BTW. At the end of the day on the 18th, I will lock down the repo and declare the code a release candidate. The only work that is allowed past that date must be approved by me and related to any additional showstopper bugs that we find. If we do not find any, the release candidate becomes our release and we will update your accounts.

To manage your expectations, I expect that the process of going from RC to release will take a week or two. If during the end of the release QA pass you find a showstopper bug that is in a part of the code that a lot of other code depends on (a.k.a. high afferent coupling), you need to reset the clock after your fix the issue to make sure your fix didn’t create new showstoppers. I will be growing out my rally beard starting on the 18th to make sure we don’t get stuck in a release candidate iterations.

This release will include simultaneous updates across many different functional groups at GarageGames. This is where Gantt charts and a solid plan that forecasts the weeks ahead is crucial. Our project manager must track resources and dependencies across Marketing, Documentation (reference API, tutorial, and guides), Web-Development, QA, Art & Demos, and the T3D development team. We will be flipping the switch on all team’s work when the release is ready to go live. This is the biggest multi-function release I have been a part of here at GarageGames and it is a testament to solid project management, experienced GarageGames veterans, and a cast of new talent.

It is way too early to celebrate. I sleep with one eye open waiting for that big “oh crap” moment which luckily, has not happened yet.

Well, back to work. We have our first sprint meeting for a different project starting tomorrow at 8:00am.

P.S. I just read that Phill Carlisle, long time community member is “Back with Torque”. He was the second person to post on my first blog back in the day. It’s great to see a familiar name back on our site and I can honestly say that his short and sweet blog has made my day!