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Run a single, visible studio-issues backlog and work it in a fixed part of every team meeting. Use IDS—Identify, Discuss, Solve—to turn cross-disciplinary problems into owned next steps. This keeps team tension, stalled deals, and doubts about a game’s core loop from becoming permanent background noise.
What belongs in a studio issue backlog?
A studio issue is a problem that affects the organisation but does not fit neatly into an ordinary development ticket. Examples include tension between teammates that is slowing production, a publishing agreement that has stalled without a clear owner, or uncertainty about whether the game’s core loop is working.
These issues persist because they cross disciplines, have no obvious owner, and rarely have a natural meeting in which to resolve them. Keep them separate from the game’s normal task backlog: a task describes work someone already knows how to execute, while an issue describes an obstacle that still needs collective understanding or a decision.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchCreate one shared, visible list. Every team member—including leadership and marketing—must be able to add an issue they cannot solve alone. A shared list prevents important concerns from remaining in private notes or being raised repeatedly without a decision.
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How to create the list from scratch
Start with a focused SWOT analysis
If there is no existing backlog, run a team SWOT session. Capture strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, then extract only items that are both relevant to the studio’s current situation and actionable. Strengths provide useful context, but they generally do not require immediate issue-solving work. Add new issues whenever they emerge after the initial workshop.
Write issues so the team can act on them
- Describe the situation rather than assigning blame.
- State the impact on the studio’s ability to perform.
- Leave room for the group to discover the underlying problem; do not preselect a solution.
- Make the item specific enough that one meeting can produce a next step.
For example, “The publisher is bad at communication” is a judgment. “The publishing deal has had no owner or decision date for three weeks” is an issue the team can investigate and assign.
Make issue-solving a standing meeting practice
Reserve dedicated issue-solving time in every regular team meeting. Put it on the agenda with a real time allocation instead of leaving it to the final minutes. Select the most pressing item, work it through IDS, record the owner and next action, and then move to the next item only if time remains.
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| Implementation choice | Effective practice | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|
| Issue storage | One shared backlog visible to the whole studio | Private lists hide problems and create duplicate conversations |
| Meeting time | A standing, timed agenda item | Ad hoc discussion is postponed or squeezed out |
| Conversation order | Identify the problem before proposing solutions | People debate fixes for different symptoms |
| Follow-through | A concrete next step with an explicit owner | The meeting ends with discussion but no resolution |
IDS: Identify, Discuss, Solve
IDS is the issue-solving sequence attributed to Gino Wickman’s book Traction. Its value is procedural: it gives a potentially meandering conversation a shared order and requires the group to leave with a decision or a defined next action.
1. Identify the underlying problem
Agree on the problem beneath the symptom before suggesting a remedy. Ask what is actually blocking the studio, who is affected, and what evidence the team has. The key discipline is to spend time making sure the group is solving the right problem before discussing anything else. A publishing delay, for instance, may turn out to be an ownership or decision-rights problem rather than a communication problem.
2. Discuss the relevant context
Bring together what people know, what has already been tried, and how different parts of the studio are affected. Hear the perspectives that are relevant to the issue, including production, leadership, marketing and other functions with direct information. Keep the discussion focused on understanding the identified problem; do not let early solution proposals reset the conversation around a different symptom.
3. Solve with an owned next step
Choose a full solution or a useful partial solution. Define the next action in concrete terms, assign it to one person, and specify any decision or check-in needed. Then move on. A partial decision with an owner is more useful than a unanimous conversation that produces no work, date or accountability.
A practical first session
- Build the backlog: run the SWOT exercise, extract relevant and actionable weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and invite the whole studio to add unresolved issues.
- Book the time: add a timed issue-solving block to the next regular team meeting’s agenda.
- Choose one issue: select the item with the greatest effect on the studio’s ability to perform, not simply the loudest complaint.
- Run IDS: agree on the underlying problem, share context and prior attempts, then decide an action and owner.
- Update the list: record the decision, owner and next checkpoint so the issue does not return as an unstructured debate.
Common failure modes and corrections
Scattered private lists
Symptom: leadership, developers and marketing each maintain separate concerns. Correction: move unresolved studio-level issues into one shared backlog while retaining ordinary production tasks in the development system.
Immediate solution debates
Symptom: participants argue about fixes before agreeing what is wrong. Correction: pause and complete Identify; ask which symptom is being observed and what underlying obstacle explains it.
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Endless context sharing
Symptom: the group discusses history and perspectives but never decides. Correction: time-box Discuss, then require Solve to produce a full or partial decision, a named owner and a next action.
Issues with no owner
Symptom: the same topic returns at every meeting. Correction: assign one person to the next step and record when the team will review the result.
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Where this fits in studio management
This practice is the issue-solving habit in the series’ FIRM framework. Purpose explains the studio’s “why”; a BHAG and yearly goals provide direction; regular IDS sessions prevent the organisation from getting stuck while pursuing that direction. The series next previews quarterly rocks, which translate priorities into shorter-term commitments.
Martijn van Zwieten is described as a business and leadership coach and creator of the FIRM and LoGOS studio-management methods. Online Tech Guru reports that he has coached more than 150 CEOs, founders and leaders (2026); that figure is a biographical claim from the publisher, not an independently documented denominator or methodology.
Further reading
The source article, updated 14 October 2026, is “How to run an indie game studio: Part 3, Dealing with issues”.
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