Dorian Kieken recently appeared at the Montreal International Games Summit, he is a development director at the fabled game company BioWare. With a Masters Degree in Project Management, Dorian has worked in the video games industry for over seven years.
He has been credited on twelve titles in roles ranging from Game Design to Production. In the past three years, Dorian has been actively involved with agile methodologies and online planning, introducing them to DC studios and then improving them at BioWare.
Recently, he has been leading the move to a new management tool at BioWare and has also become an active contributor to the Agile Project Management group within Electronic Arts. Dorian is currently working as a Development Director on Mass Effect 2.
I caught up with Dorian at the MIGS event and was lucky enough to have a chat with him on varied topics. We touched base on his work history and lessons learned when working at a more rigid developer (DC studios) to a more forward thinking one in BioWare.
Dorian's big passion though is effective planning methodology, dealing with games at the scope of BioWares requires an immense amount of preparation. To achieve an effective planning structure Dorian worked with a company called Hansoft, based out of Sweden, and leveraged their project management tools to bring a living plan methodology to BioWare and the EA group at large.
The planning process is organic and able to ebb and flow enabling them to decide quickly what tasks can be discarded in favor of more important choices as well as track milestones and challenges effectively. Dorian is the Development Director on Mass Effect 2 and a true indication of his planning system bringing results is that the game is on target for it's long announced January 26, 2010 release date.
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