Talking to Each Other: Methods for Open and Successful Communication Across Disciplines

I attended the "Talking to Each Other: Methods for Open and Successful Communication Across Disciplines" session.

Brass tacks, this is where a lot of companies absolutely crater themselves. This was largely centered around conflict resolution (designers and engineers), applicable to a bunch of scenarios.

Gary Stelmack (representing design) and Marq Singer (representing engineering) drove the session.

This was one of those sessions (for me) that contained no new info, per se, but was still incredibly valuable in the restatement (and very encouraging to hear it presented to game devs.

Coming from a heavy requirements management background, I did like the reminder to to not start a dialog with the requested solution. Rather, starting with a general statement of what offer to be done, and the parameters the solution offer to meet.

Other bits:
*People to whom your talking don't necessarily have the same context you do.
* Do thinking about the problem, possible solutions, pros and cons, etc. - and be able to articulate them.
* Avoid a heavy use of lingo
* "I'm as smart as you" syndrome (being afraid of looking stupid, which is the flip side to cultural elitism, which wasn't addressed in the talk).
* Cool idea to tag people with internal "evangelist" (bridge builders) to work through cross-functional friction / disconnects.

I like how much energy Marq and Gary had, which made what was ostensibly a personnel process talk engaging. I also like how honest Gary was in talking about how he used to fall into the elitist trap, until people who cared enough broke him out on it.

My criticism of the session is - HUGE irony - there was no real dialog prior to the Q&A. They basicly tore through the content at us for 45 minutes.

Official breakdown:

We will discuss the basic framework and components that make up a typical cross-discipline discussion of a feature or feature request. This will delve into the tools that are required to properly initiate a discussion and cover the necessary types of information and goals that need to be developed before the discussion can start, providing a basis for identifying common problems that must be overcome before the discussion can successfully progress. Using examples that might be seen on a daily basis while developing a game, the types of common problems that hamper effective communication will be covered, along with techniques on identifying and rectifying those issues and finally, how these techniques can work with external communications and in dealing with online communities.

Speakers

* Marq Singer
Red Storm

Marq Singer has had a long and varied career. He spent the late 80's and early 90's working in the film industry in a variety of projects and roles, which ranged from general crew for TV commercials to special effects for horror films, including the minor cult-classic Killer (1989). He is a co-author of "Java Applets and Channels: Without Programming" and has contributed to the popular "Game Programming Gems" series. He has given multiple lectures on a variety of game-related topics. Since 1998, he has been working in the games industry serving in a number of engineering functions including physics, animation, UI and AI. Currently, he is a physics programmer for Red Storm Entertainment, a division of Ubisoft, working with both the Havok(tm) engine and custom dynamics. The most recent title that he worked on was Rainbow Six: Lockdown for the PS2 and PC.

* Gary Stelmack
Red Storm

Gary has worked at Red Storm Entertainment for 11 years, assisting in the development of games from both the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. He started in QA and shifted into design, where he has been happily working for the past 8 years. Being involved in both disciplines and working with relatives who are engineers has helped him to develop solid communication skills that were often learned the hard way. Most recently, Gary has worked on America's Army: True Soldiers for the Xbox 360 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 for the Xbox 360.