Advising behavior change of difficult co-worker A very smart, somewhat of an alarmist, game designer just joined the team I've been assigned to. Things are going fine enough but I'm starting to observe some patterns of behavior I would like them to correct and streamline their way of working. For example, we run scrum for our teams and have been reactive to feedback in the community for our game. During a backlog grooming session, we decided to shuffle some tasks around due to lack of supporting resources which included some small continuation work he was assigned to do. He made a small scene and gave me some lip about it after I told him. I decide that maybe we can support it, since a goal of his was tied to it. He was going on vacation for a week and it wouldn't make sense anyways. There have been some other times we have fallen out of dialogue in a similar fashion. Though in the end, these situations are not that dramatic or don't matter. Another symptom I would like him to change is his over analysis and large embellishing of design docs. We move quickly on our game and iterate on ideas quickly. Which means we go for the minimum viable for testing features internally. If we get proposals from him they can be too detailed for the stage of dev and miss the mark. He is spending time answering "what if" questions for things which may be cut. So it's two things: the knee jerk reaction to things he perceives not going his way and being too detailed on design at the proposal stage. I do feel these are artifacts left over from previous jobs at publishers with maybe less than healthy work cultures and lots of front loaded planning for 3 to 4 year development cycles. Again, this guy is really smart and capable, but I feel these little moments are holding him back and discredit him a bit. It's hard to take someone seriously when their default response is crying wolf. How have you approached a conversation like this with a difficult co-worker you worked with? One who was not a direct report but you are responsible, in ways, for tailoring their output. https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

A very smart, somewhat of an alarmist, game designer just joined the team I've been assigned to. Things are going fine enough but I'm starting to observe some patterns of behavior I would like them to correct and streamline their way of working. For example, we run scrum for our teams and have been reactive to feedback in the community for our game. During a backlog grooming session, we decided to shuffle some tasks around due to lack of supporting resources which included some small continuation work he was assigned to do. He made a small scene and gave me some lip about it after I told him. I decide that maybe we can support it, since a goal of his was tied to it. He was going on vacation for a week and it wouldn't make sense anyways. There have been some other times we have fallen out of dialogue in a similar fashion. Though in the end, these situations are not that dramatic or don't matter. Another symptom I would like him to change is his over analysis and large embellishing of design docs. We move quickly on our game and iterate on ideas quickly. Which means we go for the minimum viable for testing features internally. If we get proposals from him they can be too detailed for the stage of dev and miss the mark. He is spending time answering "what if" questions for things which may be cut. So it's two things: the knee jerk reaction to things he perceives not going his way and being too detailed on design at the proposal stage. I do feel these are artifacts left over from previous jobs at publishers with maybe less than healthy work cultures and lots of front loaded planning for 3 to 4 year development cycles. Again, this guy is really smart and capable, but I feel these little moments are holding him back and discredit him a bit. It's hard to take someone seriously when their default response is crying wolf. How have you approached a conversation like this with a difficult co-worker you worked with? One who was not a direct report but you are responsible, in ways, for tailoring their output.

from GameDev.net https://ift.tt/2Yek4Wz