Category Archives: Zynga

Team Health, Anonymous Surveys, and Data

Posted on April 25, 2016 by stevek

I’m often asked a series of questions related to managing team health, creating realistic schedules, the need for crunch time, how to “squeeze an extra 20%” out of an already efficient team, and so on. Here I explain what we … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Uncategorized, Zynga | Leave a comment

Aaaaaand … ChefVille is Live

Posted on August 6, 2012 by stevek

About a month ago, we had an Unleashed event featuring ChefVille. Our game is now live, you can find it at http://apps.facebook.com/chefville/ Here are a few articles about the game. Games.com – ChefVille: All about the food, its ingredients and … Continue reading →

Posted in ChefVille, Cooking, Zynga | 4 Comments

ChefVille Unleashed

Posted on June 27, 2012 by stevek

For the past few months I’ve been working on a game called ChefVille, announced today at Zynga Unleashed.  It’s nice to have the game announced publicly so I can say a little more about it going forward. ChefVille has a … Continue reading →

Posted in ChefVille, Zynga | 1 Comment

Hidden Chronicles

Posted on January 4, 2012 by stevek

Today Zynga launched a new game called Hidden Chronicles.  Hidden Chronicles is a “hidden object” game in which you search for all the objects hidden within an illustration presented on the game screen (like the one to the right).  It … Continue reading →

Posted in Zynga | 2 Comments

Technical Pecha Kucha

Posted on December 17, 2011 by stevek

Pecha Kucha is a fun presentation format, bound in both content and time (20 slides of 20 seconds each – about 7 minutes long).  At NetApp we employed a similar format for “outrageous opinion” talks in engineering which I really … Continue reading →

Posted in Communication, Pecha Kucha, Zynga | 3 Comments

Scoping for 90%

Posted on September 24, 2011 by stevek

I’ve been working at Zynga since early 2010.  One of the challenges of running an online game (like Café World, on which I’ve spent most of my time) involves releasing new features on a regular, predictable cadence. As a result, … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Software, Zynga | 2 Comments

Peopleware

Posted on February 22, 2011 by stevek

I recently wrote about several of my favorite books on software and team productivity. Peopleware is a classic book on team building, productive and “jelled” teams, individual and team productivity, and work place environment. It is thought-provoking and should be … Continue reading →

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Three Good Books

Posted on February 15, 2011 by stevek

I’ve been working on the Cafe World team at Zynga for just over a year now.  It’s a great ride – we have an energetic and talented team who have built a wonderful game. Zynga executes software projects in highly … Continue reading →

Posted in Software, Zynga | 3 Comments

CityVille

Posted on December 8, 2010 by stevek

Zynga recently launched its latest game title CityVille.  It is described as “Monopoly meets Main Street” – it’s a city building and management game.  So far the game is growing even faster than FrontierVille, as reported in TechCrunch. You can … Continue reading →

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