A while ago, I was talking to my friend & colleague Mary Thorn about the notion of agile “playbooks”. Mary had been working with a client in NYC and had developed a playbook for their agile adoption and practices. From her perspective, developing these sorts of:
Guidelines
Rules
Methods
Standards
Guardrails
Were invaluable for helping a large organization effectively transforming with agile approaches.
During the development and deployment of the playbook, she asked me to share my playbook. And the very question caused me to pause.
I’ve been an agile coach for ~20 ears, so I certainly have the chops. But upon reflection, I realized that I’d never, ever developed a playbook for a client. And I sort of busted Mary’s chops a bit around the idea.
Why you might ask?
Because I think there exists sufficient “playbook” information. For example, the Scrum Guide is a wonderful playbook for Scrum, so why do we need to augment it. And there are books that do a great job of sharing agile insights and nuance. For example, Geoff Watt’s Scrum Mastery or my Product Ownership books drill down into specific roles.
And then there is the ubiquitous Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which contains volumes of “playbook” advice. Why in the world would we want to add to that…monstrosity, I mean framework?
Don’t get me wrong, I was simply being playful with Mary. I knew that if she developed something it would be well-informed, well-intentioned, and useful for her clients.
So, after our conversations, the notion of “playbooks” has stayed with me. And I’ve (sort of) warmed up to the idea. So much so, that I thought I’d share some links here to a few interesting public playbooks…
Play Books to Pique Your Interest…
Thoughtbot Playbook – mostly focused on design sprints and app development.
https://thoughtbot.com/playbook
Liberating Structures –
http://www.liberatingstructures.com/
Red Hat: Open Organization –
https://www.redhat.com/en/explore/the-open-organization-book
Atlassian Team Playbook –
https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/health-monitor/leadership-teams
Design Sprints –
https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/introduction/overview
https://trello.com/b/Tvntem8Z/digital-telepathy-design-sprints-playbook-public
https://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/design/the-ultimate-and-free-tool-for-facilitating-design-sprints
https://miro.com/blog/design-sprint-guide/
http://liuriting.com/doc/Google-DesignSprintMethods.pdf
Netflix Culture –
https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
Wavemaker: Business Agility Playbook –
https://www.wavemaker.com/wp-content/uploads/Business-Agility-Playbook.pdf
Booz Allen – https://www.boozallen.com/s/insight/publication/agile-playbook.html
and Booz Allen on the Agile Alliance website - https://www.agilealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/08.031.17-Agile-Playbook-2.1-v12-One-Per-Student.pdf
LitheSpeed, Agile Scaling Playbook –
https://lithespeed.com/agile-scaling-playbook/
Wrapping Up
First, I’d like to invite anyone to post other links to useful agile playbooks as comments to this post. I’d love to see the list grow.
Second, I know everyone is thinking about whether I’ve developed my own playbook(s) since my conversations with Mary? The simple answer is no. Probably due to stubbornness than anything else ;-)
I still like trusting the existing knowledge and not recreating it. But there’s another reason for me personally. I don’t like over developing “guidance” for agile teams. I lean towards providing them “just enough” guardrails and then letting them sort things out on their own. Let them do the research and discovery. Let them make their own mistakes. Let them learn and grow.
Yes, this might take a little longer and be a bit more painful. And yes, this can also work at-scale.
But in my experience, it also creates a much more resilient and self-sufficient instance of organizational agility. Which, I think, is the point.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.