New year, new you? Welcome back to Hammer the Backlog, the weekly Warhammer mini painting, accountability and productivity blog, where this week we are getting a start on quarter 3 of year 2 of the project! As with every other time, a new quarter brings new rocks, targets that are set at the start of the quarter that I must adhere to, come hell, high water or the liminal space between Christmas and the New Year.
Hammer the Backlog is all about me using the methodology of running a small to medium size business to keep myself productive and accountable. That basically breaks down into three main parts. Firstly, I have a weekly scorecard which keeps track of the health of the project. Green means things are going well, red shows what things might be slipping.
The second thing is the Rocks themselves. I usually have between 2 and 4 Rocks per quarter. The rocks are set in stone, be all and end all targets for the quarter. If nothing else happens in the quarter, but I get the rocks done, then the quarter is a success. I have to be very careful to make sure, therefore, that the rocks are SMART every quarter.
The final thing is the weekly meeting. The weekly meeting is where I check in on the scorecard, check the progress on the rocks, deal with any problems that have popped up, and then write the whole thing out and present it to you, the beautiful readers, as a blog.
SCORECARD
Let’s start quarter 3 as we mean to go on, with a green sweep. Everything in the green, as I hope to keep it for the new 3 months or 13 weeks or 90 (ish) days. I’ve done a bit of a sneaky manoeuvre this quarter, taking the maximum advantage of the liminal space between Christmas and New Year, and a week and a half off work, to do this quarter’s Bits and Bobs early, in the first two weeks rather than at the end. Will this come back to haunt me on week 13? It had better not, or I will be blaming you, personally!
Everything else progressed as expected with all other commitments met.
Let’s move on and take a look at this quarter’s new rocks.
NEW TARGETS
Since I had the second quarter review and third quarter target setting session last weekend, I already know what this quarter’s targets are going to be.
- Get Blood Bowl Orc team painted, photographed and online.
- Get Chaos side of Dark Vengeance army painted, photographed and online.
- Get 3rd Edition Blood Bowl starter set match report played, filmed, edited and online.
All three targets have the completion date of Thursday 14th March 2024!
Remembering that all of our targets must be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timebound
Let’s take a look at the targets!
Specific – The orc team from blood bowl 3rd edition, 12 plastic models, and the Chaos side of Dark Vengeance, 28 (much more complicated!) plastic models.
Measurable – photographed and online
Achievable – 63 Hammer the Backlog Points (History shows I can do 65 in a quarter!)
Relevant – It’s a blog about painting models!
Timebound – by the 14th of March 2024
THIS WEEK’S MODELS
This week’s models are a real Christmas treat to myself! All round internet good egg Simone from Old Realm Forge is doing some classic style Dwarf 3d models. He was kind enough to send me the files a little early, and I took advantage of the Christmas holiday period, as well as the fact that I got a new supply of IPA and resin in my Christmas haul, to get them printed and painted up as quickly as I could. There were 8 models in this first batch, but I stuck to the Hammer the Backlog system of doing five at a time.
Simone has done a great job on these fellas. They are small and characterful with just the right level of detail to fit in with 4th or 5th edition Warhammer models. The pre-supported files also printed perfectly on my first try, which I just love. Most importantly of all, for the pedants among us, they are the exact right size to face off against my beloved Fabelzel Chaos Dwarfs.
I decided to paint them in the 4th edition style as a non-uniform wearing clansman/militia style unit. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this, although “the ugly stage” (i.e that moment when you are not sure if the colour scheme is going to come together) was exacerbated by having 5 different schemes. I think I like the one on the left, with the blue shirt, red trim, cream shoulder guard and yellow neck guard best, even though he was the one I was most unsure of during the process.
I have three more of these to get done next week, then it will be on to the official rocks of the quarter!
QUARTERLY REVIEW VIDEO
As with every other quarter since the first one, I also made a short video reviewing quarter two and planning for quarter three. Please give it a look if you have a few minutes to spare.
That is more or less it from me this week! Thanks for sticking around for another quarter of relentless progress, you’re good eggs!
See you in 2024!
Hammer the Backlog 
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