Thread by @joegoroth

Delivering actionable notes to game teams can be very challenging. Screwing it up leads to frustration and lots of extra work.

One of our directors at Bungie introduced a method of separating our responses into three distinct categories that's really helped us give better notes.

Two disclaimers.

1. This method is not one size fits all, but it has been so helpful to us recently, it seems selfish not to talk about it.

2. This is specifically a rubric for downward alignment, as two of the categories require the team to take action.

So, after playing a build, you're generally going to have a lot to say. To help make any form of these written notes cohesive we only pass them down to the team in one of these three categories.

1. Feedback

We use this category to ask the team to address something, without telling them how.

For example: "We can't tell what's happening in this combat encounter. It needs to be more readable."

If you've given a piece of feedback, the expectation is that the team must resolve it, but its up to them to figure out what they want to do.

This means the people giving the feedback are expected to be open to a lot of different solutions, as long as the problem is fixed.

2. Direction

We use this category to ask the team to implement a specific solution to a problem.

For Example: "The Wizards in this encounter should all be leveled up to Yellow Bars."

In this rubric, if you aren't giving the prescribed solution to a problem, its feedback not direction. Both require action.

Direction is specific. Its not fun to receive or give, but direction an important tool to address problems quickly so teams can iterate on other issues.

3. Thoughts.

While the amount of Feedback/Direction a team can handle is constrained by bandwidth, thoughts are free.

A thought is note you want to share with the team that requires no action.

A thought could be as simple as: "I loved this," or "I got lost during this part"

Thoughts are a great way for a team to build their own backlog of actions to take after a milestone.

If the team gets a bunch of thoughts that confirm/deny suspicions they already had, they will likely take actions.

Its totally fine to hand the team notes with 0 Direction/Feedback, but you should always have some thoughts to share.

Anyways using this rubric has been super helpful for us to set expectations. It does not prevent bad feedback/direction, but each note having a clear expectation often incites more immediate reactions and forces us to get together and re-align sooner if we don't agree.

One last thing. This could be a widely known rubric that was invented 100s of years ago by people I've never met, but its certainly been new to me and drastically improved my notes.

Learning stuff like this from my incredibly smart peers is one of the things I love about Bungie.