Aaron Smith Email & Phone Number

Castle Rock, Co, Us

Building Better Games is for leaders in the games industry. Do you have the feeling that we're focused on the wrong things and using ineffective approaches in our studios?So do we. We will provide practical solutions for shipping better games, and help you become the leader you want to be.

Castle Rock, Co, Us

Valarin provides premium consulting services for games industry leaders who want results in their organizations but are tired of the traditional "talking head" model of consulting.We are focused primarily on growth studios that start to scale after launching a product.We focus in these areas:1. Organizational design and planning to reach a yearly cost-effective growth path.2. Senior leadership programs that provide the skills to scale their roles beyond startup thinking.3. Strategic planning that focuses the studio on the most valuable things at the lowest cost.4. Game production support, focusing on the role of the producer as the vessel for clear culture, product, and process.

Castle Rock, Co, Us

Providing career guidance, goal-setting frameworks, and mentorship to games industry leaders and executives. I will help you build a path toward higher compensation, more influence in your organization, and practical tools to get results from your teams.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

 Hired more than 15 high-performing delivery leads across Riot (development managers) that produce high-quality outcomes/results. Key owner and contributor to Riot’s DM tech screen stage where we assess craft efficacy. Lead Player Platform initiative: managing accounts, social infrastructure, a foundational service gateway, client UI, and patching technology for ~100 Developers. Developed frameworks for product and delivery. Creator and core trainer for Riot’s Agile Fundamentals program. Teaching Rioters a growth mindset, basic agile principles, how we work at Riot, and a broad set of techniques. Taught over 400 Rioters across the globe. Directly managed a team of 7 delivery leads, including other managers.Lead Player Platform initiative. Product areas include:*Player accounts infrastructure across all products and regions*Social infrastructure (chat services, social graph, and friends lists) across games*A unified API gateway providing access to all platform services across Riot for game devs*Internal and external-facing client UX for managing games.*Publishing and internal developer tools.*Mobile SDK and foundation services.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

 Quickly developed a project plan that spanned 1-2 years and included harsh uncertainty. Included a plan to scale the team from 25 to 100 rapidly to achieve the company’s goals. Created a scaled system across 150 employees that included project plans, defining process, identifying risks, informing stakeholders, and most importantly: creating roles/responsibilities/accountability within the team  Delivered the League Client Update Project: The largest software deliverable at Riot since the launch of League of Legends. Built a team of teams framework on the client project that allowed us to scale with tiered leadership groups, ability to move individuals across pods as needed, and a way to split the backlog across groups. Key trainer and contributor to development management discipline pillars, requirements, and training programs. Built a team of dev managers on the League Client project that became some of the highest performers at the org. Created leadership teams for product and project management through incorporating discipline recruiting, specifically in the craft depth and culture areas

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Facilitated operation of product management team and served as delivery Lead for the Core Gameplay product group within League of LegendsCreated a system for continuous improvement and KPI's for the product groupImplemented scaled agile work system for the product group that enabled cross-team product prioritization and linked team objectives with goals of product group and League of LegendsImplemented strategic framework across all 5 teams (~80 people) focusing on the core game experience for League of LegendsManaged the team of development managers toward more effective delivery leadershipDrove an effort to raise awareness of, root cause, define, and attack bugs in League of Legends that significantly increased quality on Core GameplayIdentified and utilized metrics from the RCA system back into dev efficiency efforts on League of LegendsCreated a system for managing and tracking playtests for LoL gameplay that led to improvements in how they were operated across the boardDelivery lead for a reorganization of the web development group at Riot. Moved the team from a discipline team model to a new set of fully cross-functional teams embedded throughout League of Legends

New York, Us

Lead three development teams through Scrum transition and incorporated cross-functional development style, increasing visibility on key data points to encourage change and deliver key results (ingestion and catalogue systems)Collaborated with leadership and development teams to focus on shortening lines of communication; empowering individuals above driving tasks and substantial documentation; and improving the work-life balance of the teamDemonstrated positive initial results from teams transitioned to Scrum, such as decreased interruption, end-to-end ownership of the code, and less blockage from dependencies

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Leader for the League of Legends Store and Game UI teamsMentor junior team leads and worked closely with product owners to increase process maturity across the League of Legends features segment. Facilitate the scrum of scrums artifact for the features groupCreated training programs, presentations, and direct coaching to evangelize philosophy and practice behind product ownership, scrum, kanban, work in progress limitation, and reducing waste

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Analyzed data points such as hours/story point, story points/dev, and total team daily velocity to reduce emergent work from 50% to 18% while continuing live service Increased team velocity by 50% over six months and maintain positive teamwork/life balance with minimal crunchProduct Owner and Scrum Master for the web group that launched a new E-Commerce payments system for League of Legends. Prioritized work from stakeholders, managed banking and payments partners during integration, and coordinated work with a third party development team overseas.The new system allowed League of Legends to monetize throughout EuropeScrum Master for the League of Legends Season 2 launch. This was an initiative spanning multiple teams including marketing, operations, web content, web development, game, and platform. Facilitated progress with team leads through a scrum of scrums and impediment removal. Raised visibility and mitigated risks.