Sprint Plan

This week's sprint plan will be based on the results of your playtest – actual data gathered from players.

This is the final week of development! This week's plan will be based on the results of your playtest – actual data gathered from players.

In the playtest you're running this week you'll check whether players understand your game and which parts they think are working best. If your playtest does its job, you'll learn a lot about what is and isn't working. So we recommend that you do your playtest first, using the build you submitted in the last unit, and then make your plan for this week based on what you learned.

If players think something is broken or unfinished, do you really need it? Or can you use that time better by improving the core of the experience?

As you update your backlog and choose one final round of tasks, you’ll focus mercilessly on getting the game ready for release. That might mean disabling or removing features you didn’t finish. If you have to do this, do it first, because it will likely create some bugs. You might also give yourself some time to polish assets, e.g. making sure all your sounds are at the same volume. But it’s likely most of your work this week will be fixing bugs and addressing player feedback.

The instructions are the same as other spring plans you created, but they're provided below so you can remind yourself of the steps. When you’re finished you’ll turn in some form of your sprint plan as screenshots or video capture.

Weekly Sprint Review and Plan

These instructions describe the exact process that professional teams of all sizes use to manage the work of game development. It has several steps, and it looks long because each step is explained, but it should only take 5-10 minutes to do for a small project.

You’ll use the same system you used when you made your backlog, whether that’s a spreadsheet, a to-do manager like Trello, or a dedicated system like JIRA. When you’re finished you’ll turn in some form of your sprint plan as screenshots or video capture.

Part 1: Review

Taking a couple of minutes to learn from your experience each week will make you a better developer.

1. Get better at estimating. Look at your current sprint plan – that’s the to-do list you made last week. Observe what you did and didn’t get done. Look at the estimates of effort you made for each item. Were you able to make an accurate guess about how long the task took? If not, what was it that made the work take longer? Just stopping to think about it will make you better at estimating your work in the future.
2. Recognize your hard work. You might be disappointed in your progress this week – that’s actually pretty normal. But take a moment and pat yourself on the back for what you did get done. You’ve climbed a little further toward being a game maker, and everything you did this week will be easier from now on.
3. Reset. Take everything you didn’t finish and put it back in your backlog. That might mean copying and pasting in a spreadsheet or physically moving Post-It notes, depending on your system.

Part 2:

1. Plan Leave the room. It’s a good idea to physically stand up and leave the room, but failing that, at least close your eyes. Imagine your game in its final form. Think about where your game is currently, that is, what’s already visible in the build. Then open your eyes and return to your work station.
2. Update your backlog. Look at the stories in your backlog. Based on your vision of the final game, do you notice anything missing? Is anything unnecessary or not as important as you thought? Are there any stories that could be combined or split into smaller parts?

Once you’ve updated the list of stories, look at each story in turn. Ignore its current priority and whether you’ve already done work on it. How important is it, right now, to finishing your game? Update its priority accordingly.

1. Look at your availability. No week is the same. Do you have doctor appointments, lunch dates, algebra tests, or meetings with your agent? Think about each day in turn and write down how many hours you will have to give to your game this week. If the answer is zero, write zero. If you plan to work all seven days, consider taking a day off in the middle so you don’t burn out.
2. Choose your tasks. Now that you’ve identified the most important remaining work and the time you have to spend on it, choose stories from your backlog that you will work on this week. As you copy them into this week’s plan, go ahead and give some thought to how you will implement them. Does your estimate of effort (1, 2, 4 or 8 hours) seem about right? When you’re done, make sure your total workload matches up with your actual availability this week.