Case 06 · Large-programme delivery

A ~$20M flagship, carried by a small team.

Role
Senior Producer
Organisation
A leading mobile game developer
Budget
~$20M
Tenure
A decade at the company

The production, in three shots

A ~$20M flagship.

A small team, responsible for very large problems.

Shipped, at flagship scale.

Illustrative. Problem areas are examples, not a project record.

The problem

A flagship title with a ~$20M budget, and a team far smaller than the problems it owned. Every problem was large, and there were never enough people to spread it across.

What I did

  1. a Owned the production plan: scope, milestones and the trade-offs between them.
  2. b Kept a small team on the problems that mattered most, and cut the rest early.
  3. c Took the title through to launch, at flagship scale.

What it took

~$20M

flagship budget

Small

team, owning large problems

Shipped

taken through to launch

Outside games

Big programmes rarely get the team size they need. The skill that transfers is deciding what not to do.

The judgment call

“Small teams ship big things by cutting early. Scope is the real budget.”

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