Development Groups formation

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 08 Mar 2005 15:47

I've edited my list to show Mek's changes.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 09 Mar 2005 00:20

All we need now is short names for each part, no more than 2 words.

Lilman424 · Post by **Lilman424** » 09 Mar 2005 03:43

/me maliciously renames Albatross EmpireBot

Coding/Technical
Interface/Gameplay
Information/Publicity

Post by **uzurpator** » 09 Mar 2005 05:29

Well - the main group would be design - and all members would belong to it...

The best choice would be:

Code and technical (coders)
Multimedia (artists)
Publicity (websites)

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 09 Mar 2005 08:06

I miss something important in your list, uzurpator. You translated Steve's 'Everything else FOR the game' as publicity but I think there's more to do FOR the game than just advertising it. Who's gonna manage this project i.e.? Each dev. group should do his own group management IMO but there needs to be something above that too. It's always good to have a '3rd party' keeping an eye on progress and chasing you out of your lazy chair when needed.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 09 Mar 2005 10:39

Yes, maintaining the Wiki for example, has little to do with the common public. Yet it'd fit into the final group.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 09 Mar 2005 14:53

Coding
Content
External? Supplement? Umm...

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 09 Mar 2005 16:56

Coding & Bug hunting
Content & Multimedia
Management & Publicity

Zuu · Post by **Zuu** » 09 Mar 2005 22:08

Code Group (CG
Technical Group (TG) or Content Groupp (CtG) or ...
Management Group (MG)

#1 and #3 isn't much of a problem, but #2 is more difficult. Becuse it is a wide group with things from art to i18n to coding standards to usability. So probably we have to use a wide name as technical group, Content group is probably to narrow, as a coding standord is not content.

Hyronymus: remember that multimedia is a sort of content.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 09 Mar 2005 22:28

Why don't the coding standards go in the coding group?

It seems a bit weird for one group to tell the other group how to do their job like that. Unless i don't understand what coding standards consist of.

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 09 Mar 2005 23:05

zuu wrote:Hyronymus: remember that multimedia is a sort of content.

I was thinking of strictly gameplay-related multimedia. All other multimedia is best of in the management group I think but never without steering from the other groups.

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 10 Mar 2005 00:46

Steve wrote:Why don't the coding standards go in the coding group?

It seems a bit weird for one group to tell the other group how to do their job like that. Unless i don't understand what coding standards consist of.

The reason is to separate coders from the standard. There are two points to this:

1. If you have the same people writing the standard and then applying it, you run the risk of attachment and short-sightedness. If only some coders are working on it, then the other coders may be more effective in spotting the problems as they go, and policy writers not involved in the coding may see something emerging in the code that the coders don't see.

2. If a newcomer finds something is missing in the standard, they will do one of two things. Either they raise an issue - "Hey, what's your policy on xxx?" - or they adopt their own standard for it. If everyone adds their own little bits to the standard, you get a situation such as IRC II (some 300 standards were cobbled together, most implementations are non-compliant in some way).

Of course, people on the code standard working group need to have some knowledge of software engineering, and there's nothing to stop a small number of people from various coding sub-groups working on the code standard working group.

In the end, coding standards are a policy, and it would probably be a good idea to keep all policy work together. Remember that the big three are work areas rather than solid groups. If you have a "technical group", this implies (=>) that there are people in that group => technical work is done only by technical people => some technical people might not have work. With a "technical work area", => that there is some work of a given kind around. My initiial idea with the structure was to separate work rather than people. In an office environment, you have a given set of resources to use. You may often find that you have to find work to give to people. Since what we're doing is voluntary, we need to find people to set to work.

I can't make that point strongly enough. Of course, I could be being short-sighted and too attached to the original idea, but then other people could at the same time be too attached to traditional methods of thinking - remember that we're not a traditional software project.

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » 10 Mar 2005 11:22

How is this done at other Open Source game groups?

ChrisCF · Post by **ChrisCF** » 11 Mar 2005 02:14

Probably in a similar way, if they've any sense

My experience working with people in and around GNOME threw up a large number of small, focused teams (one per app, backporting teams, several to look after bugzilla, policy teams, multiple release teams, the beta teams from the major distributors, etc.), though certainly that's on a very much larger scale than what we'll be doing. Having a large, unfocused group doesn't really make a lot of sense, and remember that large unfocused groups is not what I'm proposing - a few people seem to have misunderstood this.

Arathorn · Post by **Arathorn** » 11 Mar 2005 09:39

But for the people making, for example Freeciv, what groups do they have?
We have a little trouble making these groups ourselves, but other people probably already invented the wheel.

jfs · Post by **jfs** » 11 Mar 2005 15:15

But why can't we have four main groups?
- Coding
- Content creation
- Technical management
- Non-technical management

As I understand it, Chris is making the point that several small and better focused groups is better than a few less focused groups, so if we have trouble making a simple definition for one group, it's probably because it's already too wide, and should rather be split into two or more groups.

Also, people should remember that any group can always decide to internally have several sub-groups.

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 11 Mar 2005 15:36

I think jfs made a good point there. I think it's easier to have the management divided in two as he suggested. Or if anyone is against 4 groups make 1 general management group and let it have two subgroups.

Lilman424 · Post by **Lilman424** » 11 Mar 2005 20:39

there's no difference between 4 groups and 3 groups, one of which has 2 sub groups. just semantics, really.

Hyronymus · Post by **Hyronymus** » 11 Mar 2005 20:51

Really? Mabe I should've ended with [/sarcasm] after all

.

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 11 Mar 2005 21:41

Yes there is. These groups are the top of the hierarchy, so we either have 3 people looking over the work, or 4 people. I suppose you could also look at it as 3 people with 2 sub-people though.

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