Great piece, Doug. The dependency chain framing maps cleanly onto what Lean calls a value stream, and your OBAMA sequence is essentially a value stream map waiting to be drawn. One thing Lean adds to the waterfall toolkit that doesn't get enough attention in games is the distinction between cycle time and wait time. In most AAA pipelines, the majority of elapsed time on any asset isn't work time. It's queue time between handoffs. The bottleneck problem you describe is real, but the bigger silent killer is assets sitting idle waiting for the next department to pick them up. Takt time thinking (matching each team's output rate to the downstream team's intake rate) can help teams design their capacity to reduce that accumulation before it becomes a crisis. The wall you built at Creative Assembly was essentially doing this manually and visually, which is exactly what Lean practitioners would recommend. The Jabberslythe is a perfect example of a high-WIP, low-flow feature, and the five-year wait for it suggests nobody had sized the constraint correctly at the start.
Thanks Rob. I think Lean definitely needs more attention in game production. Even I have never gone through formal Lean training. Whenever I hear about Lean management it always just "seems like a sensible idea". :)
Well, the good news is that all you need is a mindset shift, not training. It will work with the stuff you are already doing, by the way it looks.
A good place to start is the book "When Will It Be Done?" by Dan Vacants, or check out his YouTube channel, Drunk Agile, which he does with Prateek Singh.
Based on the above article, "Flow Engineering: From Value Stream Mapping to Effective Action" by Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis is another good pick.
Also, follow these authors on LinkedIn and ask them questions. They are all very approachable.
Lastly (self-promotion warning), I've been writing about all this stuff in the context of game production for the last three years on Substack and have a deep archive of lean topics tailored for game production leaders.
This is fantastic Rob! Thanks so much for all the recommendations! :D I'm enjoying sharing what I've learned so far but there's so much it there to learn.
Great piece, Doug. The dependency chain framing maps cleanly onto what Lean calls a value stream, and your OBAMA sequence is essentially a value stream map waiting to be drawn. One thing Lean adds to the waterfall toolkit that doesn't get enough attention in games is the distinction between cycle time and wait time. In most AAA pipelines, the majority of elapsed time on any asset isn't work time. It's queue time between handoffs. The bottleneck problem you describe is real, but the bigger silent killer is assets sitting idle waiting for the next department to pick them up. Takt time thinking (matching each team's output rate to the downstream team's intake rate) can help teams design their capacity to reduce that accumulation before it becomes a crisis. The wall you built at Creative Assembly was essentially doing this manually and visually, which is exactly what Lean practitioners would recommend. The Jabberslythe is a perfect example of a high-WIP, low-flow feature, and the five-year wait for it suggests nobody had sized the constraint correctly at the start.
Thanks Rob. I think Lean definitely needs more attention in game production. Even I have never gone through formal Lean training. Whenever I hear about Lean management it always just "seems like a sensible idea". :)
Well, the good news is that all you need is a mindset shift, not training. It will work with the stuff you are already doing, by the way it looks.
A good place to start is the book "When Will It Be Done?" by Dan Vacants, or check out his YouTube channel, Drunk Agile, which he does with Prateek Singh.
Based on the above article, "Flow Engineering: From Value Stream Mapping to Effective Action" by Steve Pereira and Andrew Davis is another good pick.
Also, follow these authors on LinkedIn and ask them questions. They are all very approachable.
Lastly (self-promotion warning), I've been writing about all this stuff in the context of game production for the last three years on Substack and have a deep archive of lean topics tailored for game production leaders.
This is fantastic Rob! Thanks so much for all the recommendations! :D I'm enjoying sharing what I've learned so far but there's so much it there to learn.
Thanks again.
Break a leg at the conference with your talk. Are you representing your studio or promoting your book?
Not really representing the studio this time, and I'll only be promoting the book off-hand. Mostly just getting back in touch with the industry. :)