Agile for Everybody

Chapter 7. Your Agile Playbook

As we discussed at the very beginning of this book, it is ultimately up to you to understand why you are turning to Agile principles and values, how you are going to put those principles and values into practice, and what success might actually look like on the ground. This chapter is your opportunity to answer those questions for yourself and your team. If you are so inclined, you can mark your answers directly on these pages. If you would prefer to complete these steps digitally, you can find a template at http://bit.ly/AgileforEverybodyPlaybook.

Note that the answers to these questions will likely be very different depending on your role, your team, and your prior experience with Agile. The goal here is not for you to create a perfect, comprehensive, and risk-free plan; rather, it is for you to begin thinking through some of the questions that will ultimately lead your team down a meaningful and purposeful path. You can approach these questions yourself to clarify your thinking, or you can bring them to your team as a set of shared prompts for reflection. Even if you do not plan to write out your specific answers, I strongly suggest that you read through the questions in this chapter and think broadly about how their answers might affect your Agile journey.

Step 1: Setting Your Context

As we discussed in Chapter 2, having a frank and transparent conversation about the desired state of your organization—and what is currently stopping you from ...