The Red Team - Changing project leads in the middle of development

The scene goes along these lines: The whole team is gathered at the biggest meeting room, and the company owner or equivalent says “We're here to announce we'll be making changes on the team structure. Effective today Mr. Smithee and Mr. Doe will be reassigned to other tasks, and a new leadership group will take over. We believe a new approach will be beneficial for the remaining months of development. We want to sincerely thank the efforts of the former leads and bla bla bla...”

If you've been in the industry long enough, chances are you've seen this happen more than once. In the best case, Mr. Smithee and Mr. Doe will have another assignment in the company. But they can also end up sitting in a dark corner, sending resumes while they observe from a distance how their baby is being raised by others

The reasons for upper management making this decission can be multiple: Team's lack of focus, changes in upper management itself, down-to-up communication problems, successful back-stabbers... you name it. Let's not get into that too much. It just happens

However, that decision comes with a cost. Changing the keepers of the game vision will surely bring design or methodology changes at a critical time, increasing risks. Internal dynamics within the team will have to be rebuilt. Promises made by the former leads will be ignored and the confidence of the team in the company will seriously drop. Some members may consider to look for another job

If you weren´t aware of that, a jelled team is probably the most precious element you can have in game development. (If you didn´t already, I recommend to read DeMarco & Lister’s Peopleware.) External intrusions have all the potential to destroy that chemistry. In any case, these are traumatic situations that put valuable employees on the verge.

However, it is unquestionable that sometimes course correction is needed. We all know about projects that went beyond their money/time budget, weird game visions that needed a reality check, or simply the market changed during the development. In most situations, upper management HAS to act for the good of the project/company, or the consequences will be worse.

So the question is: Would it be possible to allow stakeholders to make such course-correction while not affecting the team's stability? Actually it is. It’s sort of happening in the industry already.

There are some companies that offer consulting services to game projects, making evaluations of the product, recommendations to make it better and even offering fairly accurate Metacritic score predictions.

Although it does provide a non-biased report and a course of action, those consultant services are optional after all. There is always the temptation of discarding their recommendations based on any excuse you find handy. And those companies don't work for free, of course

Now let’s take a look to an already established Ubisoft procedure. The company uses the role of “project closers,” fairly frequently on Assassin’s Creed developments in particular

What does a “closer” do? His involvement is either planned or expected, and he jumps onto the project in the last milestones. A closer overrides the authority of any existing lead of the project, can cut features, reduce scope and veto bugs. His ultimate goal is to finish the project no matter the cost

Mind that detail: The closer involvement has always been sort of expected. This is important for what is coming. Also, he/she is not a permanent member of the team, and the former leadership doesn´t necessarily have to feel aggravated by his involvement. It´s just part of the process and as such, not traumatic.

This approach looks promising but still sounds to me like an amputation-like solution. Something like: Dammit! Everything else failed! Well, no other solution than butchering out the affected leg before the infection expands to the rest. It’d be better to find a solution earlier

So, at this point the question is: Could we establish a development process that allows upper management to make leadership adjustments minimizing the impact on the team? Maybe we could. Let´s talk about “The Red Team”.

In “The Newsroom” series (Episode “One step too many”, Season 2) a group of journalists if chasing up a potential story related to the US army using sarin gas in Pakistan. They are completely sure of the autenticity of the material, but the risk of going live with it is too high. After all you´ll be accusing the United States of using weapons of mass destruction on allied territory.

Planning ahead, a group of the most senior members of the team have been deliberately left aside of this investigation so they can later become “the red team”. That way, they examine the facts found by the original team, and make an external veredict about if the story can be aired or not

So, here goes my proposal: What if we do something similar in the videogame industry? It could work like this:

Now, in which situations this Red Team could be helpful? I believe it could be these two:

Semi-external consultant - On each of the major project deadlines (end of concept phase, alpha, beta...) they will re-evaluate the stakeholders' requirements, see how the game is adjusting to them and make recommendations. This is not totally different from the elder council some companies have to evaluate their projects. Only more systemic.

Course-correction tool - The most extreme case, the Red Team takes over the leadership if upper management is seriously displeased with the results. Similar to Ubisoft´s closers anyway, but with a twist:

This Red Team idea is not a new concept, you know. You can check its entry on wikipedia and take a look at how it has been applied to other fields such as the military and even computer hacking. Still, I haven´t seen anything not remotely similar to this working in game development. So feel free to take it with a grain of salt, since it borders into what I call “management porn”

What would be the advantages of establishing this process?

Now, what are the problems/risks? So far, I can mention:

Looking forward to know your opinions