Dylan Albers

Graduation Thesis

Which project management software is most suitable for a game start-up company

For my graduation I wanted to do something that was project management related as this topic is of high interest to me. Also did my graduation have to be game related as I did the Game Architecture and Design bachelor at the NHTV in Breda. For these reasons I decided to research project management software and which of those software packages could be most suitable for a games start-up.

To do this research I did a graduation internship at Atlantis Games, here I received help with some parts of my research in return for my help with project management. Atlantis Games is a game start-up itself so it made much sense to do this research project there.

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to find out what a suitable project management tool is for a game start-up according to a testing matrix defined and explained in this thesis.
There are many different project management tools on the market, each with their own set of functionalities which may or may not be useful for a game start-up. Seeing as a significant number of game start-ups fail, it could be beneficial to have a suitable tool to prevent that from happening.
The thesis first examines which tools are used in the gaming industry and why. Based on the information found in the desk research a grading system was created with which different project management software was graded. Finally, a survey was performed to find out which of the best project management software was preferred by the participants of the survey.
The results of the thesis show that there are some tools that are suitable for a game start-up but also that each game start-up is different. It concludes that for each game start-up the preferences for a project management tool are likely to be different. This thesis recommends that each game start-up needs to make sure it knows what it needs before choosing a project management tool.

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