Sprint 1 done! Just 800 more until I retire! Not too shabby.
There’s a lot to take away from this first sprint, but before we dive into the retrospective lets start with the Sprint Review.
Sprint Review
The stories planned for this sprint were:
- Create Kickstarter art assets for the landing page including, the cards, a basic set-up, splashy art, a title
- Create BGG art assets (if not covered above)
Submit for Kickstarter review- Update my Kickstarter bio/profile
- Create a brief but engaging project description
- Create a more detailed BGG game description
- Publish blog
- Link to blog in Break My Game (BMG) diary
- Post link to blog in BGDL
I completed all of these except for submitting my game for a Kickstarter review. I ended up getting blocked due to issues with my business verification, and I’m still trying to resolve that. The Kickstarter landing page was going to be my key output for this sprint, so I had to pivot.
Luckily not long after I was blocked I was listening to a one of the new BDGL podcasts (new episodes, yay!!) and on it one of the people from the Crowdfunding Nerds was explaining that for longer term planning it is better to drive people to an email sign-up landing page than to a Kickstarter pre-launch page. The value is that way you have the ability to send email updates on this and future games since Kickstarter doesn’t give out email addresses until after the campaign completes and someone backs it. Being stuck on the Kickstarter page anyway I figured this was a good time to pivot.
So instead of submitting for Kickstarter review I created a new pop-up on my website to drive email sign-ups:
And I gave myself credit for another story
- Create website email sign-up landing page for email capture.
I also shared the link to my site for feedback on the BGDL Facebook group to act as my “shippable” product to get feedback on. I got positive feedback, some good suggestions, and even some email sign-ups which was super exciting!
Sprint Retrospective
I’ve been through quite a few process changes in my professional life (few job changes, few company acquisitions) and the first time you try to operate in a new environment it always comes with some surprises. Things don’t go the way people thought, and you have to make some adjustments on the fly. So nothing new here as I stumble to the end of my first sprint in my self-inflicted Agile wound, and a few things to consider moving forward.
Sprint Timing
The first shift I decided I had to make was rather than finishing my sprints on Sunday I switched to Tuesday. That’s because unlike the work week, the weekends are when I have the most time to work on my publishing tasks and I didn’t want to spend that time coordinating sprint reviews. Also since my sprint reviews generally rely on the input of wonderful strangers, I figured posting on Tuesday afternoons would be better than Sunday nights.
Change: Sprints now end on Tuesdays.
Sprint Review
This I think went as I expected since my target for this sprint was to share my “shippable” product on the BDGL Facebook page, and I have shared there before.
Apart from actually sharing the output, I also spent some time considering the best mechanism for the sprint reviews going forward. I want to have an easy log of my sprint reviews for people to follow along with for their own learning/interest, and I’m not sure where the best place for that would be. I decided that along with where ever I’m sharing my output (e.g. BDGL page for this one) I will also post that output with my sprint retro blog post, and in my BMG diary. As with everything else, this might change.
Change: On top of sharing my output with targeted audience, post it on my blog and my BMG page, and completed stories in my website diary.
Sprint Backlog
I really liked having a relatively small list of backlog items to focus on during the sprint. There are so so many different workflows I could focus on and picking which one often impedes my ability to jump in with what limited free time that I have. However, I found that I am much less likely to do any work not on my sprint backlog. That is of course part of the idea, so I’m glad that’s working, however I did find myself a few times wanting to get some work done but only having large tasks that I couldn’t dive into for just 30 mins. It’ll be a balance, but I think I need to pull in some other tiny tasks to help fill those times. I also need to add sprint planning into the backlog to address the next sprint.
Change: Add some more smaller tasks to the spring backlog, as well as a sprint planning story.
Sprint Retro
A sprint retro item in a sprint retro – so trippy duuude.
It takes valuable time to write up the sprint retro, however since I’m lacking any better long term engagement strategy this seems like a good way to build a crowd who is interested in following the launch of a small publisher. My commitment to myself is not to spend undue time on wording of my retros, just a quick stream of consciousness to document my findings and keep myself accountable. In the end I think it will be worth the time even if 30-60 mins a week is going into this rather than advancing my game.
Change: Publish each sprint retro
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