Guild Charter - Project Management

Meeting Times: TBD weekly, 1 hour
Meeting Location: Stauffer B204, Zoom Link
Guild Coordinator: Alex Vuong


Guild Purpose


The Project Management guild is united by a common interest in directing and managing XR productions (and similar roles, such as software development and VFX/film production). Project managers lead teams of artists, developers, and designers effectively—producing high-quality creative work on time and on budget.


Experiential Learning


Every member of our guild will have hands-on opportunities to practice:


  • Strategies and toolsets to organize your team, resolve interpersonal conflicts, establish professional standards, and give effective feedback.
  • Facilitating discussions, presenting to an audience, and managing questions in a stakeholder-meeting environment.
  • Setting up and using PM/producer software such as Jira, Trello, ShotGrid, ftrack, Excel/Sheets, Zoom, Slack, Discord, Google Calendar/Outlook, Drive/Dropbox, Git, PlasticSCM.

Foundational Knowledge


Every member of our guild will have the opportunity to learn:


  • Fundamentals of the project lifecycle, budgeting processes, requirements gathering, timeline estimation, scope management, and stakeholder relations.
  • Foundational understanding of management frameworks such as Waterfall, Kanban, Agile, Scrum, PMBOK, film pre-production.
  • An interdisciplinary understanding of your team's production tools: game engines, programming languages, audio/video editors, 2D/3D art programs, UX wireframing.

Competencies


Every member of our guild can gain proficiency in the following:


  • Excellent communication skills in both spoken and written formats, with appropriate tone and professionalism for every situation.
  • Strong organizational skills to kickstart and lead a new creative team, create a positive/collaborative atmosphere, and prevent deadlocks or stalemates.
  • Effective collaboration with diverse team roles (programmers, artists, designers, film crew, engineers, etc) by knowing how to "speak their language".



"What does it mean to be a strong Project Manager?"


  • Mason: Truly understand the skills and abilities of your team (esp. hard skills and competencies).
  • Agustin: A good PM takes responsibility. It's up to you to organize & move forwards.
  • Austin: If something's not getting done, you gotta step in. Understanding how long things take & how to set appropriate deadlines. Understanding the goals & the vision of your project.
  • Yajur: It's the PM job to deal with the stakeholders, so you can shield your team from outside troubles.
  • Abhirup: A project manager should have good organizational and risk-solving, problem-solving abilities. You can be adaptive to different situations & not fall upon instinct.
  • Rachael: Good communication! Making sure everyone's on the same page. Finding balance, being open to everyone's ideas, but also not afraid to say no and be assertive when necessary.
  • Alex: Build consistency for yourself. Identify what energizes you & what drains you, and learn how to use that to your advantage. Building structures for yourself which help you be organized even when you feel like you can't.