Communication and trust in a rapidly changing environment: Product Owners in the gaming industry
Author: Thomas Brosnahan
Supervisors: Henk Roodt Trish Franklin
18 May 2021
Brosnahan, T. (2021). Communication and trust in a rapidly changing environment: Product Owners in the gaming industry.(Unpublished document submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Professional Practice). Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga, New Zealand.https://doi.org/10.34074/thes.6488
Abstract
The gaming industry in New Zealand, and the world, is rapidly growing and changing. NZ’s Interactive media sector earned $323.9 million in the year preceding the 1st of April 2020, increasing by $121 million on the previous year (New Zealand Game Developers Association Survey, 2020). The gaming industry all around the world not only survived but showed extreme resilience amid a global pandemic - seeing increased demand from gamers as they stayed in their homes and enjoyed the products from this industry more than ever before. The research reported on in this thesis originally aimed to discover how the role of the Product Owner in game development projects could be improved. The environment in which this research journey took place was rapidly changing and volatile due to both ever-changing business needs, and because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I found, in the chaos, through extensive action research cycles and personal reflection that the role of the Product Owner in game development is poorly defined. I conclude that the ability to build trust and communication pathways to provide context and requirements were the most important factors discovered that contributed towards successful project outcomes for both the Product Owner and Team Members.
Keywords
video games, Product Owner, communication, trust, organisational change, gaming
License
A copy of this thesis is publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
