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You can use "we didn't start early enough" in such a way that it loses all meaning. If you know your deadline (most game devs do) and your 100% in control of y

You can use "we didn't start early enough" in such a way that it loses all meaning. If you know your deadline (most game devs do) and your 100% in control of your scope then it's up to you (the team) to pick a scope that fits your resources (people and time). The original article talked about situations where people didn't know the scope or couldn't change it and often wasted lots of time not starting. I think those are fundamentally different situations.

dahart 11y ago
You're absolutely right that games are in a generally different situation than a lot of other software projects; having control over scope means, in theory, you don't ever have to be late. And yet it happens routinely, possibly (I speculate) more often than not. The article implied once that people wasted time waiting to start, in reason #1: "Nobody had the guts to kick off the project until the competition proved it doable and desirable." But reason #2 is where games that have a deadline and scope control fit in. "If the project were started long enough before its due date to finish on time, all involved would have had to face up to the fact from the beginning that it was going to cost a lot more than anyone was willing to pay." You picked a scope that fits your resources, and yet you manage to run well past the deadline. You started it thinking you'd get it done in time, and yet you managed to run late. If you started earlier with the same deadline, scope, people, etc., you would finish on time. This might feel like a somewhat silly observation (which the author points out in advance) but it is nonetheless true for the situations you are describing. If you didn't finish on time, then you didn't start early enough. It's a slightly twisted way of saying your scope was bigger than you thought. It's not saying that actually starting earlier is the solution. Reason #3 is entirely metaphorical. "No one knew that the project needed to be done until the window of opportunity was already closing." This is saying that you know your scope, and you have a deadline, but you didn't even think of the idea until it was too late. It is true to say that you didn't start early enough, but it is also true that you couldn't possibly have started it earlier, without a crystal ball. The thrust here is not literal. I disagree that it loses any meaning at all, it just might not mean what you thought.

dahart 11y ago

You're absolutely right that games are in a generally different situation than a lot of other software projects; having control over scope means, in theory, you don't ever have to be late. And yet it happens routinely, possibly (I speculate) more often than not. The article implied once that people wasted time waiting to start, in reason #1: "Nobody had the guts to kick off the project until the competition proved it doable and desirable." But reason #2 is where games that have a deadline and scope control fit in. "If the project were started long enough before its due date to finish on time, all involved would have had to face up to the fact from the beginning that it was going to cost a lot more than anyone was willing to pay." You picked a scope that fits your resources, and yet you manage to run well past the deadline. You started it thinking you'd get it done in time, and yet you managed to run late. If you started earlier with the same deadline, scope, people, etc., you would finish on time. This might feel like a somewhat silly observation (which the author points out in advance) but it is nonetheless true for the situations you are describing. If you didn't finish on time, then you didn't start early enough. It's a slightly twisted way of saying your scope was bigger than you thought. It's not saying that actually starting earlier is the solution. Reason #3 is entirely metaphorical. "No one knew that the project needed to be done until the window of opportunity was already closing." This is saying that you know your scope, and you have a deadline, but you didn't even think of the idea until it was too late. It is true to say that you didn't start early enough, but it is also true that you couldn't possibly have started it earlier, without a crystal ball. The thrust here is not literal. I disagree that it loses any meaning at all, it just might not mean what you thought.