I never did a proper retrospective for my past LD. I always had in mind what was working and what not, but this time I decided it might be fun to run a full fledged retro in I wish / I like format.

What is retrospective?

For those of you far from corporate world and agile processes, retrospective is used to extract learnings from the past work find the most painful issues and come up with action plan to get better next time.

There are various formats on how you can do retro, I used the simplest one this time.

The idea is that you have two columns. In each of these columns you put facts about your work during LD. - I like put facts that start with I like, e.g. I like sounds I made for the game; - I wish put facts that start with I wish, e.g. I wish the game had more content

Do it in a brainstorming format, timebox yourself to 20 minutes tops. Just do a complete braindump about your LD there. Maybe have a look in comments about your game, but just for inspiration.

Extracting the value

Go through each item and ask yourself: - "Why did I like that? What could I do next time to make sure I will like it again?" - "Why the thing I wished for didn't happen? What can I do now or next time to make this happen?".

The answer will probably lead to an action item you can plan for yourself. If that's the case - write it down. If it doesn't immediately lead to an action, ask yourself "Is there anything I can do about it?" and write down what you can do.

By the end of the retro you should end up with: - A short-term plan: e.g. what you can do now (maybe learn something a bit deeper, maybe practice in something) - A long-term plan: how you will approach the next LD.

Paper Fishing retro

Here is how my retro looked like.

Please comment if you have any recommendations on the action items I defined, also feel free to share your retro results in case you also decided to run one!

If you want to see the game I was doing it for you can play Paper Fishing