Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams

206 Pages·2016·2.41 MB·English

by  Diana Larsen

Liftoff, Second Edition
Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams
by Diana Larsen, Ainsley Nies
Version: P1.0 (June 2016)
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Defying Gravity
What Is a Liftoff?
Why We Wrote This Book
What’s Inside?
Who’ll Benefit from Reading This Book?
1. Plan for a Successful Liftoff
Are You Ready to Plan a Liftoff?
Who Plans the Liftoff?
Planning the Liftoff
It’s Never Too Late
What’s Next?
In Practice: Team Restart
2. Navigate Learning Environments
Setting Conditions for Optimal Team Learning
Focus on Learning
What’s Next?
In Practice: Applying the Rules
3. Design a Great Liftoff for Your Team
Initial Design Considerations
Designing the Start
The Heart of Your Liftoff
Ending Your Liftoff
What’s Next?
In Practice: A Kickoff Workshop Gem
4. Smooth the Path to Performance with Agile Chartering
What Is Agile Chartering?
Leading the Two Parts of Chartering
Amending the Living Charter
What’s Next?
In Practice: The System Tracking Project
5. Charter a Clear Team Purpose
Understanding Purpose
How to Facilitate Agile Chartering for Purpose
What’s Next?
In Practice: How a Team Found the Power of Purpose
6. Create Coherence by Chartering Alignment
Understanding Alignment
How to Facilitate Agile Chartering for Alignment
What’s Next?
In Practice: Team Building in Transition
7. Charter Context to Influence Work
Understanding Context
How to Facilitate Agile Chartering for Context
What’s Next?
In Practice: A Tale of Two Projects
8. Soar from Liftoff to Flight
Preparing for a Liftoff Retrospective
Conducting a Liftoff Retrospective
Keeping the Team Charter Alive
Have a Great Flight!
In Practice: The Yardbirds
A1. Sample Charters
A2. Sample Chartering Agendas
A3. Contributor Biographies
Bibliography
Copyright © 2016, The Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Early praise for Liftoff: Start and
Sustain Successful Agile Teams
High-performing teams are born in an environment where they are supported
from inception. Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams provides
excellent techniques complemented by insightful stories that illustrate how you
can help your teams execute with purpose throughout the project. This is an
essential guide for coaches, project managers, and facilitators.
→Jorgen Hesselberg
Director, Intel Corporation
This book is very hands-on, providing practical advice that motivates a team to
start lifting off right away! A must read for everyone starting a project or product
—no matter if the approach will be agile or not.
→ Jutta Eckstein
Author of Retrospectives for Organizational Change: An Agile Approach
You may think that by now we know the importance of setting up new teams for
success, but not everyone knows exactly how to go about it, and even fewer
know how to do it in the incredible ways described in this book. We have all
seen this done badly, rushed, or missed completely, but this book removes any
excuses by giving the reader absolutely everything they will need. If you are
starting a new team or you want to kick-start an existing team, this is the place to
start your liftoff.
→ David Mole
Agile coach and coauthor of Creating Great Teams: How Self-Selection
Lets People Excel
Foreword

My first introduction to the importance of liftoffs was in 2010. Diana Larsen and
I were designing a training course on cross-functional agile, and she wanted to
include a segment on team formation. As always, we had more material than
time, so including her fluffy team-formation stuff meant cutting out some of my
—far more important—continuous-integration material.
But I agreed, and I’m glad I did. Diana used a simple and fast technique for
starting team formation that I’ve shamelessly stolen and used ever since. The
technique was to share one thing about yourself that people don’t learn until
they’ve known you for a while.
More important, Diana sprinkled aspects of her and Ainsley’s liftoff expertise
throughout the course. Her lectures and activities about purpose, alignment,
context, and the dynamics of team formation helped set the stage for real
teamwork and success in those workshops. One attendee commented, “I ended
up on a development team that, in some ways, is more functional than my
development team at work. Seriously, I could take this team back and start
solving some real problems very, very soon.”
When Ainsley and Diana came out with their first edition of Liftoff in 2012, I
eagerly snagged a copy and started using the material with my teams. I’ve seen it
work over and over again. Now, with this revised and updated edition, Diana and
Ainsley have set the standard for a second time. I’ve already been fortunate to
use the new edition to help launch over forty teams. It’s concise, chock-full of
useful examples, and most important, it works.
So much of team success is based on how well team members understand their
context, their work, and one another. Every team needs a liftoff. This book
context, their work, and one another. Every team needs a liftoff. This book
shows the way.
James Shore
Coauthor of The Art of Agile Development
Copyright © 2016, The Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Acknowledgments

In 2011, we acknowledged the help and support we received from family,
friends, colleagues, and contributors as we took the journey from envisioning the
idea of a book on liftoffs to launching it. Now, in 2016, we are doubly grateful
once again for that same encouragement in word and actions for our second
edition of Liftoff.
Our continued gratitude goes to III; Sharon Buckmaster; Agile Fluency Project
organizers (James Shore, Adam Light, Steve Holyer, and Bonnie Aumann); and
our friends and families whose patience with disrupted lives, projects, and
schedules demonstrated their continuing support; as well as to Jana, Tündér,
Jackson, and River, whose visits interrupted our work in the most delightful and
reenergizing way. We have special thanks for Andrew Larsen, Lynda Levesque,
and River Larsen, who shared their beach house with us, giving us the writing
retreats we needed for focus at critical times.
We are inspired by our first and second edition contributors’ stories and by their
beliefs that starting teams well was an important topic missing from the agile
library. Thank you to storytellers and sidebar contributors: Brent Barton, Nicole
Belilos, Esther Derby, David Endicott, Frowin Fajtak, Steve Holyer, Adam
Light, Gustavo Quiroz, James Shore, Chris Sterling, David Worth, and Jim
York.
Additional inspiration continues to pour in from the many teams we’ve worked
with over the past twenty-five years. We have particular gratitude for those
anonymous teams who allowed us to use their charters as examples in this book.
We appreciate Ainsley’s university students for the continuous flow of questions
they generated while learning to lift off and charter agile teams, as well as their