What do you do if a member's work is not what you expected? Do you tell them to do it better? Isn't that awkward?
You need good leadership skills. Firstly, You have to give very precise and detailed information of what you want a team member to do. They must have a clear picture of it. There can be no room for ambiguous instructions/tasks.
If its still not what you expect. Tell them to do it better, BUT do so correctly. That can be tricky. You cant appear insincere in getting your point across. Its not easy getting something right the first time around. Some things require iteration upon iteration and methodical improvements. You have to understand that they potentially did/tried their best, and take it from there. Encouragement/Praise on existing work added with comments on where this/that could be possibly improved, is usually what I`d go for.
You can tell if someone is useless or wasting your time, genuinely not performing , etc. In that case, you replace them. Simple.
What do you do if a member's work is not what you expected? Do you tell them to do it better? Isn't that awkward?
Depends what you mean by not "what you expected". If the work doesn't fit the design criteria, you tell the designer what's off and how to improve it. This is why I advocate asking for rough drafts first, as you can steer the developer in the right direction as they refine their work. If the work is just underpar/low quality, you might have to replace them or assign them easier tasks. Everyone has their own level of competence.
Mephs that is not entirely true. Almost every great indie or open source application we have has been developed by a team. It's true that people dip out half-way through, but that's just the fluid nature of design. Even in industry, not everyone is bound to a contract to stay until the project is finished. You just need to look for replacements to pick up the slack.
You have to be a smart leader and advance the project in small steps. Many times there's no structure in a team effort and people get confused or overwhelmed by the amount of work they've been assignment. Give developers small concrete jobs with soft deadlines and you will quickly see if they are competent. If they aren't look for a replacement. As a leader you have to judge the skills of your teammates and tell them exactly what you want done and by when.
For instance I find it helps to tell someone to complete 2-3 heroes with certain spells by the end of the week, rather than tell them to finish 20 heroes. I also finds it's helpful to tell someone to complete a rough draft quickly first and then give a critique so the next more refined draft fits in better with the design. It's a continuous cycle of moving in small steps, giving feedback and moving on. This is what the leaders job is: to continuously keep the pace going in little increments. What I see a lot of is "here's my vision, here is your general role, get it done!"... a long time goes by and we get "dude, this sucks! This is not at all what I wanted!".
Learning to work with a team is one of the most important skills in this industry that you can learn. You have nothing to lose trying, so I would recommend everyone to start getting used to it, because you won't learn this anywhere else (ie. you'd get fired in the real world, so try it out here).
I'm not talking about in the professional industry, because people actually put their best effort out. I'm talking about in the modding community. You can't rely on a team because they slow you down, and often times will make your project move slower than if you just do it yourself.
You need good leadership skills. Firstly, You have to give very precise and detailed information of what you want a team member to do. They must have a clear picture of it. There can be no room for ambiguous instructions/tasks.
If its still not what you expect. Tell them to do it better, BUT do so correctly. That can be tricky. You cant appear insincere in getting your point across. Its not easy getting something right the first time around. Some things require iteration upon iteration and methodical improvements. You have to understand that they potentially did/tried their best, and take it from there. Encouragement/Praise on existing work added with comments on where this/that could be possibly improved, is usually what I`d go for.
You can tell if someone is useless or wasting your time, genuinely not performing , etc. In that case, you replace them. Simple.
Depends what you mean by not "what you expected". If the work doesn't fit the design criteria, you tell the designer what's off and how to improve it. This is why I advocate asking for rough drafts first, as you can steer the developer in the right direction as they refine their work. If the work is just underpar/low quality, you might have to replace them or assign them easier tasks. Everyone has their own level of competence.
I'm not talking about in the professional industry, because people actually put their best effort out. I'm talking about in the modding community. You can't rely on a team because they slow you down, and often times will make your project move slower than if you just do it yourself.
Programmer likes them too. ALso I do too (but I need to get good at making space battleships and sports cars)