The FIRM Framework for indie studio management
If you're like most indies, your priorities are simple: finish the game first, everything else second.
And even if we agree that this is the right order of things, there are still best practices that you can borrow from the world of management to increase your odds of long-term success.
After all, you do need to have a shared understanding of where you’re going, what you’re doing to get there, and solve problems along the way. These things fall outside the domain of development, and they need to be managed somehow.
The FIRM framework represents my best effort to condense the most important parts of studio management into as small as possible a package—one that allows you to run your studio in less than 90 minutes per week using just two one-page documents.
Here's a short breakdown of the core elements.
✨ Future
If you don’t define the long term, and explicitly agree on the long term goal, you will run into friction along the way. If one person on your team wants to become a AAA studio, one person wants to continue making small games, and another person wants to focus completely on work-for-hire, you’re going to have a bad time.
Even if your plans end up changing, the act of planning fosters alignment in your team.
⚠️ Issues
Every studio has issues. The problem is that they mostly live in people’s heads, and are rarely properly communicated. And even when they are discussed, these discussions rarely lead to concrete solutions and actions.
Having one issue list where all issues live fixes the first problem. Making time at set intervals to discuss these issues, and working through them in a way that leads to action solves the second.
🪨 Rocks
Humans tend to loose focus. Working in Quarters gives you a chance to refocus every 90 days.
Even then, day-to-day work and firefighting have a tendency to crowd out work that is important, but not urgent. Most issues related to studio management fall in that category.
Setting Rocks, and committing to those priorities, ensures that you are working on the right things, and makes it easier to keep each other accountable and moving in the right direction.
🕘 Meetings
I know, the overwhelming sentiment is that meetings suck. But there’s a way to do them well.
By committing to weekly, quarterly and annual meetings with predetermined goals and agendas, you ensure a steady rhythm of communication and information exchange, with plenty of opportunity for issue detection and intervention.
By setting up and using FIRM, you'll be able to run your studio in just 60 minutes per week plus one day per quarter. Don't leave the shape of your studio up to chance, mould it into the shape you want. 💪
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See you in two weeks!
Martijn
