April Sprint – What’s Coming up!

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

I’ve been thinking of how I organize my projects and share them with you my audience and friends.  I’ve not been thrilled with how I’ve done updates, and recent spates of illness and surprises derailed a few things.  So what I’m doing is taking my projects to be managed much more traditional Scrum style.  I got the idea here from Failbetter’s use of Agile to make them publicly engaged via blogposts while doing Sunless Skies.

If you’re not familiar with Scrum,, its basically a method of organization where you A) keep a backlog of stuff to do B) do it in small increments called sprints, and C) regularly report and measure progress.  I recommend reading up on it.

(I’m still big on the Getting Things Done method, and will use it as part of my work, but my large amount of longer-term projects require some different approaches plus this lets me try out techniques from work.)

What this means for you is

  1. Every month (a “sprint”) I’ll tell you what I’m planning to tackle on my projects.  Most Sprints are two weeks, but I plan my projects quarterly/monthly so this is a bit easier.
  2. I’ll do weekly reports (a sort of Standup) on progress. These are usually daily in proper Scrum, but I have my limits.
  3. I’ll do a roundup/retrospective at the end.

So what’s up for April!

Finishing The Color Generator: I’ll finish the Color Generator in April with the goal of deploying before the end of the Month – preferably mid-month.  I’ll be regularly updating it with new data so keep an eye out.

New Seventh Sanctum Spotlight: A new Seventh Sanctum project to spotlight talent and interesting media – this is an experiment and may or may not succeed.

Way With Worlds Minibooks #1: The followups to Way With Worlds.  I will send this to editor – remember these don’t launch until June.

Way With Worlds Minibook #5: Get this to at least 60% completion if not more.  And, yes I have four of these suckers written already – make room in your summer reading!

There are also some marketing efforts, tech purchases, and home maintenance but I don’t think you care about those.

So I’ll be posting updates weekly (probably Monday) to let you know where everything is once a week!

And as it’s Sunday, let’s get to a status!

What I’ve worked on:

  • Wrote 5 more questions on Minibook 5.
  • Minibook #1 will be in the hands of the editor next week.
  • Reached out to initial “promotables” for the Sanctum Spotlight and designed how it’ll run.  It’s pretty much ready to go, I’ll start it later this month.
  • A few notes on the Color Generator are in place, I’ll dive into that more soon.

What’s coming up this week:

  • I plan to focus on the Color Generator to get as much done as possible.
  • I’ll be attending two professional events, so that consumes time.

 

– Steve