Project Management

As a project manager I've coordinated the development, completion, and delivery of a number of projects, both as part of the development team at Beamdog and for my own projects in the tabletop game industry. The highlights are described below.

Baldur's Gate: Repairing a Legacy

While working at Beamdog, I was put in charge of organizing the post-release development work for the Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition series, which released under difficult circumstances. Prior to my involvement, the players were unhappy with the state of the games at release and the slow pace of improvements.

When I was brought on to manage the development of post-release updates, I coordinated swift development and testing for each update and also led the public-facing communication around the team's progress, including community events to build excitement for the new release. In addition, I built estimates and forecasts to help schedule our release windows and ensure that not only would our patches release on time, but that they would release without further issues.

At the peak of our development, we were releasing patches containing over a thousand code and scripting changes and dozens of new features every three months, on a team of less than ten developers and testers. The development, release, and marketing around those updates was instrumental in repairing the series' reputation among players after a difficult launch.

Mnemonic: Kickstarter Success

In the tabletop game industry, I organized and successfully completed a crowdfunded project called Mnemonic: A Weaver's Almanac, a web-based roleplaying game rulebook.

With a team of a dozen core team members, we raised over $25,000 on Kickstarter, and then grew the team to over 20 people across a multitude of countries all over the world, to complete the writing, illustration, and editing for the project. The final result is available online in the free web edition, as well as in PDF format on Leanpub.

Crucially, applying lessons from my experience on Baldur's Gate, I was able to plan our project's development and release schedule such that we released the web edition of the book ahead of schedule and under budget, without overextending the team's resources. Our art director and illustrator said it was the most positive experience they had had on a project to date.