#smallteams

Three mindset shifts that make small teams more effective When resources are tight, the instinct is to work harder, cut scope, or wait for more headcount. But the biggest efficiency gains come from changing how work happens, not how much effort goes in.   The starting point is understanding what your team actually does versus what it should be doing. Most teams can’t answer this clearly. They…

Fast tests on every push. under 2 minutes. Slow tests nightly: e2e + performance. Auto-deploy to staging. No click-ops. one-click rollback. sixty seconds. Feature flags: merge small, deploy, and toggle on later. Deploy the daily minimum. Fix the pipeline.

In the fast-paced world of game development, scope creep can quietly derail even the most promising projects—especially for small development teams. Scope creep refers to the gradual expansion of a project’s goals, features, or deliverables beyond the original plan, often without corresponding increases in resources or time. For small teams already stretched thin, unmanaged scope creep can lead to missed deadlines, burnout, and ultimately, unfinished or compromised games. Understanding how to recognize and control scope creep is crucial for maintaining focus, delivering quality, and keeping the development cycle on track.

One of the primary reasons scope creep occurs is the lack of a well-defined project scope at the beginning. Small teams, often driven by passion and creativity, may start with a simple idea that quickly snowballs as new “cool” features are added. While ambition is a strength, it needs to be grounded in realism. Having a clear, detailed game design document that outlines core mechanics, art requirements, and technical goals creates a foundation that the team can refer back to. This document serves as a compass during development, helping determine what fits the vision and what’s an unnecessary detour.

Communication also plays a vital role in managing scope. In small teams where everyone wears multiple hats, it’s easy for assumptions to be made or decisions to be implemented without full team consensus. Holding regular check-ins and progress meetings ensures that any proposed changes to scope are openly discussed and evaluated. These conversations help identify whether new ideas align with the project’s objectives or risk derailing the timeline. Establishing a change control process—even a lightweight one—can help filter out impulsive additions and keep the focus on features that matter.

Another practical approach to prevent scope creep is using milestones and setting hard feature cutoffs. Dividing the project into manageable phases with clear deliverables keeps the team oriented and creates natural checkpoints to reassess progress. If a new feature is suggested mid-development, it can be evaluated against current priorities. If it’s not mission-critical, it should be saved for post-launch updates or a potential sequel. This mindset encourages discipline and helps small teams stay agile without overextending themselves.

It’s also important to accept that limitations can fuel creativity. Many successful indie games thrived because they focused on doing a few things exceptionally well rather than trying to include everything. Features should be chosen based on their contribution to the player experience, not their novelty. A streamlined, polished game will always be more appealing than one overloaded with half-finished mechanics.

I don’t think you should be building a product. I think you should be building an organization that builds a product.

The BPM Network is a startup with a small team some of whom work in a common office space and others who work remotely.  BPM is building an entertainment network for fans of electronic dance music. Daily they identify news and trends and they need to regularly circulate info internally. 

Several team members work in different time zones which had been a challenge for collaboration. The team has a heavy flow of relevant items including articles and links which they had been sharing via email.  They found email was not providing easy archiving and overall important items were being overlooked.

The team chose to demo CHNL when they were seeking a better solution for sharing the media they discover on the web.

Steve Levy, CEO of the BPM Network, states, “I immediately found CHNL to be a great system for our team to share information we were discovering online. Setting up our own private CHNL was easy as was inviting the collaborators. Now whenever one of us pins relevant content to our CHNL we all are notified. The CHNL format allows for easy consumption, search and archiving. Its a great tool.”

CHNL provides a solution for organizing articles and shared links. It’s easy to setup a dedicated channel for multi person use. The content is appropriately tagged for easy discovery.  Team mates are invited to collaborate. All emails with links are visually displayed on an organized landing page. Now when collaborating, there is no longer a need to use email.