First Sprint Review

I had scheduled the first sprint t o end today. For the sprint goal I had set writing the DiGRA abstract and planning the second result chapter so that I could start working on both of the articles.

I reached my goals, although a couple of tickets were left undone. Total work amounted to just over 4 workdays (estimate) in a bit more than two weeks. I think that is quite good, especially if I can keep up the pace the rest of the way.

Overall I had no real problems. I think the tools really helped me, I use Trac for ticket tracking and also Trac’s wiki for a kind of a diary and the rest is pretty much on plain text files (LaTeX or just plain text) and this blog. I also use Subversion as the version control of my dissertation files. I haven’t had to dig up any previous versions yet, but I feel safe to make big changes with the version control backing me up (and me taking back ups from the subversion database).

Daily Scrum 4 – 27.3.2009

Work done

• Revised the Abstract
  • References
  • Research Question
  • Results
  • Overall style & template
• Asked comments for the abstract
• sent the dissertation text to be commented on

Issues

• Some of the reference books hard to come by

Will work next on

• Flesh out the other article outline
• Go through rest of the reference articles and books for the article for quotations and results

Estimated Sprint work left: 2

Daily Scrum 3 – 21.3.2009

Work done

• Written the first version of result 3 abstract for DiGRA:
  • background
  • method
  • significance
• Got more reference articles for the article (Scrum)
• Went through some of the articles and took notes for quotations and achieved results
• Collected the reference data for the abstract References
• Contacted potential commenters / supervisor candidates for the dissertation

Issues

• Some of the reference books hard to come by
• No feedback on new text yet (text received by supervisors)

Will work next on

• Revise the abstract
  • research questions
  • results (intended and achieved)
  • write the list of references
• Go through rest of the reference articles and books for the article for quotations and results
• Send abstract for commenting
• Flesh out the other article outline

Estimated Sprint work left: 4.7

My Article Plans for 2009

Although I’m writing my dissertation in a monographic form, I’m still planning to submit two articles in the following months. I’ve noticed that writing an article on the results of my upcoming dissertation is the best way to formulate my thoughts into a coherent whole and to get some feedback on my work. Writing the developers and teams article for DiGRA 2007 Conference was such a positive experience. So why change a winning formula?

For 2009, I have targeted two events: DiGRA 2009 in London and MindTrek 2009 in Tampere, Finland. DiGRA Conference is at the beginning of September and MindTrek starts September 30th.

The article for DiGRA Conference will discuss process control models in learning game development, especially whether to use a traditional process control model or an empirical one like Scrum. This corresponds to the third result chapter in my dissertation.

The MindTrek article will focus on defining the overall process of learning games development as well as identifying key tasks (most risky, most impactful) and defining processes models for carrying them out based on our case projects at Agora Game Lab. This is the subject I have set for my second result chapter in my dissertation.

The DiGRA abstract deadline being on April 17th, the full paper deadline at the end of June and the MindTrek paper deadline being on May 31st, my schedule for the Spring and early Summer is nicely laid out. I’m pretty excited about writing these papers; I’m sure I have a lot to offer the community with them.

Some links fixed

There were some defective links particularly to the newly added dissertation pages. I’ve now corrected them all. If you spot another, give me a shout!

Daily Scrum 2 – 20.3.2009

Work done

• Chosen the abstract subject [0.2]
• Identified possible candidates for supervisors, sketched out a letter => contacting still on-going
• Made pages describing the dissertation to the blog and posted the current version of the text to the blog [0.5]
• Listed possible candidates to publish the other article on [0.2]

Issues

• No feedback on new text yet
• Only two daily scrums in a week …

Will work next on

• Start working on the result chapter 3 abstract
• Get more reference articles for the article (Scrum)
• Outline result chapter 2 article

Estimated Sprint work left: 8.9

Burn: 1.5

Introducing the Product Backlog

I’ve now added the Product Backlog of my dissertation work to this blog. I use the  Product Backlog to list all the stuff I need to do in order to complete my dissertation. The list contains only headlines and therefore probably isn’t as useful to you as it is to me. Anyway, I’ll be updating it between Sprints to demonstrate how it and Scrum work. And to show how much I still have to go.

Dissertation Chapter Pdfs Added

I’ve added the current versions of the chapters of my dissertation into this blog. They are very much a work in progress and a subject to change. I also reserve all rights to the work. I would be very happy to receive comments, though

Dissertation Intro Updated

I’ve updated the introudctory description of my dissertation in the dissertation page.

Blog Wordle

I made a Wordle of this blog just for fun. Seems that dissertation writing is a lot of work

Wordle for This Blog