Live Operations
If your project will continue to be operated and updated after launch, it should have regular Live Operations gates to review progress, plans, risks, opportunities, and evolving business objectives.
The focus of Live Operations is to expand and increase player engagement and boost the relationship with the community via regular content updates, events, new gameplay modes, modding, user tools, unique server playgrounds, new entry points, user generated content, UX evolutions, etc. Player feedback is continually assessed, and where feasible integrated within the live operations product roadmap and release plan. In addition, the team is continuously optimizing production pipelines as well as the user experience to facilitate product updates and the player’s engagement.
In the PEOPLE category, the team structure is continuously re-assessed and re-formed depending on the project’s evolving product roadmap, influenced by both player base and player expectations. Team onboarding and training programs are regularly utilized as new team members join throughout Live Ops, and team support and development practices remain critical to ensure team engagement, preventing burnout from what can be a long, demanding product support phase.
In the PRODUCT category, the focus is on assessing, gathering, and incorporating feedback from the community into the overall Product Backlog and roadmap relative to the project’s evolving business goals and objectives. The product’s goals, objectives, and vision may evolve based on the player community sentiment and engagement. In addition, the Feature List, Content List, and Product Backlog will be continuously re-assessed at scheduled intervals to support the regular product updates throughout Live Operations.
In the PROCESS category, the focus is on ensuring and maintaining operational efficiency via the RAID areas, sustaining the release & sprint cadence, continuous monitoring and tracking via the project dashboards, and adhering to the soft and hard lock processes for each release.
The team will have regularly scheduled Live Operations production gates to outline the main learnings, issues or successes experienced since the previous production gate, as well as to stamp the production plan and planned updates for the next round of releases.
