Building a Lean Studio With an Indie Focus

Our friends over at IGDA Seattle recently hosted a wonderful talk by Sarah Smith on managing a lean indie studio! It’s definitely a must-hear for those either looking to get into project management or who have project management thrust upon them. Here’s an overview from Sarah of the talk:

“…I take some of the essentials from classic lean ways of managing teams that originate in enterprise … and make them human, immediate and relevant for small indie game development teams that have a creative focus. There’s some key insights that have helped me run our studio on a shoestring and still deliver games. As indies we may have eschewed the “rat race” for all sorts of reasons, but as soon as the responsibility of running a studio falls to us, the same exact mistakes that leads to terrible practices like crunch and authoritarian designer-as-dictator can befall us – how do we avoid becoming that which we as indies despise! I have some insights & tricks that work for me after 15 years of running teams & founding a studio, maybe they’ll work for you too.”

Missed the event? Not to worry, you can download the slides from the talk on the IGDA site!