My Medium Content
Thanks for stopping by! The content here is going to be in a little flux for a while because I’m moving items and shifting some of my media creation over to Medium as a way to leverage the power of the publishing platform. I’ll still post a unique blog here and on LinkedIn from time to time, but my main focus will be on that site.
Get in touch!
pmann@educationalthinking.com
(717) 400-6266 (voicemail)
Harrisburg, PA
CP2077: THE COST OF POORLY MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
Cyberpunk 2077 (CP2077) by CD Projekt Red Studio in Poland (CDPR, Stock: OTGLF) may be the most successful project failure in software development in history. On the one hand, it is unambiguously successful. The record sales figures for the first ten days following the December 10, 2020 release exceed 13 million copies (≈$780M) even after the raft of highly publicized, no-questions-asked refunds due to bugs and playability issues. On the other hand, the project is a failure for investors because its record sales fell short of analyst expectations of 16.4 million copies (≈$984M). For consumers, it failed because of eight months of delays followed by a delivery that lacked anticipated features. It did not perform as expected – being virtually unplayable on some legacy consoles – resulting in responses such as Sony removing the title from its PlayStation online store for all of its platforms.
Take a Hint from Gamers: Learn the Outcomes of Metrics and Systems
That is, we attempt to measure things at a high level that are changed at a very low level — measuring something with many contributing factors, but attributing it to only one or a few — and this tendency extends to our employee engagement efforts. However, if we took a simple hint from the world of gaming, we would quickly find that our fixation on measurement in the way that we do now only succeeds in encouraging undesirable behaviors.