Sprint 1: The Blocker That Almost Blocked Our Shine.

The designer moved his first ticket to the “In Progress” column, and I thought we were on track— until I checked in two days later and got hit by the unexpected.

Me: Hey man, I left some messages for you in Discord. Is the user flow ready as planned?
Designer: My charger burnt out. It’s the fifth time, and my repair guy says I should just sell the laptop and get a new one. I can’t power it up and don’t have another machine to work with.

Crazy, right? We had just kicked off Sprint 1, and design was at the center of our early work. 

I escalated the issue to our key stakeholder (in the Venture Studio model, that’s management), hoping we could quickly resolve it. But it turned out to be a deeper rabbit hole.

The short-term fix? A spare laptop.
The reality? It had issues we did not realize until it got sent to repairs. It spent days at the repair shop, and eventually, we found out the board was fried. That took us to Day 7 of the sprint. The final resort? A brand new laptop.

So yes, five days of Sprint 1 were used to remove a blocker. One that could’ve completely slowed us down. But, in true agile spirit, we had the courage to be transparent, and it didn’t kill the team’s morale the way it easily could have.

Special mention to our Biz Dev Lead who, like a superhero, saved the sprint – doing all the legwork, securing a new laptop, and getting it delivered to the designer.

Our Culture is Missionary! 

The designer is back in designer mode, and it’s Saturday. We’ve got barely three days left in the sprint. The only design task on the board? Create user flow for the desktop view.

So what did we do?
Everyone—Devs, Stakeholder, Product Manager, Designer—jumped on a Google Meet to review it together.

Now, in some setups, product teams operate more like mercenaries. Devs are hired just to write code. Their value is tied only to shipping lines of code. Design reviews? Strategy convos? User flows? That’s “someone else’s job.”

But not here.

Here, everyone came through with the spirit of a missionary. With purpose. With ownership. With the mindset to build and deliver value—together.

My highlight?
We almost slipped into feature creep. The ideas were flowing, and it was tempting to expand the scope. But the devs and Stakeholder stepped in and reminded us: stick to the MVP. Stay on track. Deliver what is urgent.

That, right there, is the missionary mindset in action. It wasn’t just a call to review a design. It was a room full of people committed to the same mission.

We’re not just building a tool. We’re building it as a team. Sprint 1 didn’t start off smooth, but we survived it. Sprint 2? Let’s see how it goes.