Met the Goal or Not?

That is what I wondered last weekend. Another Sprint completed, but was it successful?

In the end I had to conclude that it wasn’t. The current version of the Ph.D. is not a complete “product”. Never mind the stuff I did not get done, what matters most that I did not get the text into a complete package that could be reviewed.

The reason for this is that I had much to figure out for the final version of my manuscript. I had to work out new outlines of the theoretical framework, research method overview and one of the literature review chapters. All these were inter-connected in my head so I couldn’t complete any of them before figuring out the rest in a high level. And this figuring out stuff, it really commands some time. More than I had planned at this stage anyway.

But, even though the Sprint will be labeled unsuccessful, the project goes on. I have time for one final Sprint. The goal has to be to gun for the complete manuscript, final version. And I think I have enough time to do the stuff that needs to be done. So here it is, Doomsday the Final Battle, deadline on 22.12.2009.

Daily Scrum 24.11.2009

Work done

• Wrote parts of the software engineering literature review chapter:
  • Intro
  • Teams
• Updated the outline of the research theoretical framework diagram

Issues

• Nothing  significant at the moment

Will work next on

• The rest of the SE lit. rev. sub-chapters
• Theoretical Framework

Estimated Sprint work left: 30

Sprint deadline: 28.11.2009

Daily Scrum 20.11.2009

Work done

• Made a new outline on the software engineering literature review chapter
• Revised two sub-chapter of the SE lit. rev. chapter (3 to go)
• Drew an outline of the research theoretical framework diagram

Issues

• Nothing  significant at the moment

Will work next on

• The rest of the SE lit. rev. sub-chapters
• Theoretical Framework

Estimated Sprint work left: 30

Sprint deadline: 28.11.2009

Daily Scrum 13.11.2009

Work done

• Ended Sprint
• Started another
• Made a mental note on not slipping on project janitor duties
• Started working on research’s theoretical framework description

Issues

• Nothing  significant at the moment

Will work next on

• Make a new outline on the software engineering literature review chapter
• Work with the research theoretical framework some more

Estimated Sprint work left: 33

Sprint deadline: 28.11.2009

My New Blog on GBLE Dev

I’ve started a new blog on the development of digital game-based learning environments. My goal is to present the experience and knowledge I’ve gathered during my dissertation research in a practical and useful manner.

The blog is at http://learninggamedev.wordpress.com/ . The blog is based on my experiences on four GBLE development projects carried out during my research as well as literature reviews and discussions with other practitioners in the field.

I hope that my blog will be useful from GBLE and serious games developers out there. The more academic account of my research will be presented in my Ph.D. thesis which I plan to complete during the first quarter of 2010.

Planning the next Sprint

With the newest version of the manuscript out of the way it is time once more to move the focus a little bit.

With the manuscript getting close to being complete, at least relatively speaking, it is time to think about life beyond it.

One thing I definitely plan on concentrating in is disseminating the results of my ph.d. work. I mean not only academically but also making them available to the game-based learning practitioners.

In this (re-)starting Sprint I’ll focus on the ACE 2009 Conference and my presentation there. I’ll also start the blog where I will publish all the results of my study in a practice-oriented way.

I think that is the best option to go; the blog will offer the results of my work in a popularized form whereas the academic version will the Ph.D. thesis and related articles themselves.

New Up-to-Date Version of the Manuscript

I’ve posted a new version of the dissertation into the dissertation text — work in progress page. It is probably the last version I will be able to produce before the ACE 2009 conference and it’s also the first version that was sent to the prospective supervisors.

There are no more chapter by chapter files, just the whole shebang in one pdf file. As before remember that this is still a work in progress and that I reserve all the rights related to the work (at least for now).

Changing Direction Mid-Air

Ouch. It has officially happened. This is the first time, too.

I’m suspending my current Sprint and starting another one. This is a case of caving in to outside pressure. I had anticipated that it would take some more time for me to get feedback on my dissertation, so I decided to focus on other things for the time being.

But fortunately I’ve got feedback on my Ph.D. already. And, with my supervisors eager to get the thing forward, they suggested I try to get a review version as fast as I can. And when I thought about it, it made sense.

So now I’m off to polish this manuscript. I’ll deliver on the 6th of October.

Staying Up-To-Date with TweetDeck

TweetDeck has this amazing feature of following the tweets related to your search key words. I’ve used it for a week to track news related to game-based learning and it’s working like a charm!

Most tweets in Twitter contain nothing useful to the average user. In fact the typical user seems to tweet highly useful and really interesting stuff once in a while. The problem is that by following someone you get also the not-so-interesting stuff.

Using the searches provides another channel of potentially interesting tweets. And it’s not restricted to the peeps you follow, either. There’s some tweaking needed, however: The keywords Game-based learning produced a search feed that has a very high signal-to-noise ratio but when I tried the same with the keywords game design, the ratio was so low that the search feed was practically useless.

So you need to narrow your search by additional keywords to achieve the desired signal-to-noise ratio and the desired tweet frequency.  It’s worth a try!

Daily Scrum 38 – 24.9.2009

Work done

• Completed the ACE2009 article
• Started working on submitting article for DigiTel 2010 (not done yet)

Issues

• Nothing more significant at the moment

Will work next on

• submit article for DigiTel 2010
• start working on next version of dissertation text

Estimated Sprint work left: 26 (a lot of items added)