Is experience as a Game producer relevant to PM?

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Hoddle
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Hi,

Firstly, I've been lurking in the shadows for a while - thanks to everyone for your great words of wisdom!

I'm trying to map out my career & I'm wondering how relevant my experience so far is. Ideally I'd love to work as a BA in the long run, though I suspect I'd need to spend some time as a PM first in order to land that role.

I'm currently a Producer for a large corporate computer games company. Games companies don't have BAs (and very rarely have PMs - if they do they're generally focused on legal paperwork & general admin rather than delivering a product). Having never worked outside games, my understanding is that a Producer role in games is quite similar to a Project Management role in IT or software dev. Is this the case?

If you were looking to hire a new PM for your firm would you consider a Producer in games for the role? Or are the skillsets more different than I imagine?

Thanks for any pointers, I'm trying to map out the next steps for my career so this would be very helpful.
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TonyD
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Hi Hoddle:

First off in response to your inquiry, that its not necessary to be a PM in order to become a BA. They are in fact very different roles so not sure how you got to thinking that way. As a PM, sometimes in small companies you have to do the BA role, but they like I said are completely different. A BA usually works on business cases and requirement documentation. A PM primary job is to manage, communicate, plan and document a project.

I don't know how to answer your game producer question as I really don't have any idea what they do, but if their role is about managing people and coordinating work then yeah theres a chance someone hiring for a PM position may consider that close enough and take a chance. I guess you only know if you try to apply for PM jobs and see what the reaction is. Good luck on the job hunt.
"When you fail to plan, you plan to fail" - Benjamin Franklin
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dhaughey
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As TonyD says, the project manager and business analyst roles are different. However, a business analyst can be the project manager's best friend carrying out Requirements Analysis and supporting him/her during the project. I'm working closely with an excellent business analyst on my project at the moment. He has never done the project manager role, so although useful, I don't think it's a prerequisite to landing a BA role.

The producers I have met from digital agencies have usually possessed the skills to be project manager and in many cases are carrying out those activities. I don't think the leap from producer to project manager is too far.

A couple of articles that explain the two roles can be found here:

The Role of a Business Analyst

The Role of Project Managers

I hope this helps.

Duncan
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