Daily Scrum 26 – 29.7.2009

Work done

• Set the Sprint goal and started the Sprint
• Laid out the overall structure for 2nd result chapter

Issues

• None at the moment

Will work next on

• Revise the text for results 2 chapter’s research questions
• Move/Write the text for case project process descriptions

Estimated Sprint work left: 24

Other notes: I’ll be unable to work on this on fridays this week and next week due to work duties. The good news is that I’ll save those days for later.

Sprint Planning for August

Sprint Goal:

To produce a polished version of the second result chapter, concentrating on the first part (analyzing the process models, making observations). Support this by modifying the literary review chapters as needed.

Sprint deadline 28.8.2009.

Sprint backlog: 25 (I’ve decided to use bigger numbers for story points from now on, basically multiplying by 5 for start to ensure I won’t get into fractions when estimating workload)

And so we go on.

June Sprint Review

The main goal was met, but some tasks were dropped. This was due to the latter part of the sprint coinciding with my holidays. I halfway planned to work on my dissertation during holidays also, but in hindsight taking a vacation from this work also proved to be a good idea. I haven’t lost the focus (thanks to my trac tickets and Scrum Sprint goals to keep me focused), but I do feel very well rested and I think I have more energy to work after hours now than I did before my vacation. After all my summer holiday the year before was only 2 days.

Completing my second article was more effortless than the first one I have to say. It took less time too. The main reason is probably that I had more solid idea for the article and had spent time solidifying the idea while working on other stuff too. This kind of “idle processing” is very valuable. I don’t know if a lot of people talk about that. There was this actor / director Clive Barker that spoke about the value of idleness in all creative ventures but that’s about it. Anyway, this is a thing I’ve thought to be true for a long time now.

Cleansing Fire

I read the double-blind feedback on my article submission with my ears burning brighter and redder sentence by sentence. Critique is difficult to receive, especially the honest, brutal and helpful kind. I’ll wince through the rest of it later this week; I have to analyze which parts of it I agree with and devise a plan for addressing those points.

So I didn’t get my article through to the MindTrek 2009 Conference, mainly due to my research not being on the cutting edge of current research or quantitatively enough result-producing. Well, you cannot win always and as they say as a dissertation-writing aspiring researcher I’m still learning the ways of the academic community.

I’ll continue to work on my thesis and leave the conference-applying stuff on the back burner for a moment (I still have one line in the water mind you). The conference submission deadlines worked well for me as a catch to produce complete text and now it is time to push all that text into the emerging monster I like to call my manuscript.

I’ve been on a vacation from work and from my dissertation for the last 4 weeks — I really needed the time after working straight through last summer and only having a weeks vacation during the whole of last year. Now I feel ready to continue — let’s finish this!