Hello!
Two years ago we decided to take the agile development
technique of “Scrum,” and apply it to our personal projects and development
outside of work. As co-authors for this
personal production oriented blog, we also work full-time. Luciano, at Quantum Squid Interactive in
Portland, Oregon, and Alex at Sucker Punch Productions in Seattle, Washington. While our professional work takes us
elsewhere, we each have aspiring goals for ourselves personally and have found
a great way for helping each other progress.
How does it work?
Every weekday we check in with each other and give a short
summary of what we did the night before, what we plan to do the next night, and
what problems presented themselves during the previous night's work. We read what the other has posted and provide
feedback, encouragement and engagement.
The system yields excellent progress and flexibility for application to
multiple disciplines aside from a standard production cycle.
We occasionally chat for prolonged periods of time, either
working with each other, or helping each other develop ideas outside of the
daily Scrum cycle. We found this process
to be absolutely beneficial as the accountability, and agile approach to our
own schedules proved to be another great take-away from Agile and Scrum
Development. We use the system in two
ways. The first being the traditional
project management way. The second and
most unique manner of application treats ourselves as the project, and the
desired skill-sets as the vertical slices to work on that make up the whole of
our professional abilities. This blog
represents an extension of that thought process.
So what?
Since we've stuck with it for so long, we have decided to
share a weekly update to further strengthen our weekly sprint goals, and to
help establish structure for the long term as our projects get more
ambitious. Our main purpose here is to
help show our processes, our struggles and our productivity. We want to contribute to the creative
community in our own way, by giving transparency through a system that can be
adapted by anyone. We will be posting
said above mentioned weekly updates, but also information on our process and
how it benefits us specifically. If you're interested in structuring your own
personal time around writing, design, concept art, asset creation, shader work,
programming, music or whatever it is, post along with us and let us know as we
are always interested to hear from others.
Cheers,
Alex Dracott &
Luciano Alioto
