We held a “Fringe” session at Agile 2011 to discuss how people charter or kick off projects.
Elements of “Kickoff”
[These are in no particular order.]
- Vision
- Release Criteria
- Success Criteria
- From and To State
- Business capability
- Solution vision
- Risks / Fears
- Rallying One-Liner [may match up to Vision]
- [Early] Backlog (maybe)
- Mission
- Team Agreements / Social Contract
- Community [incl. users, customers]
- Project Boundary
- Domain Language
- Scope Discussion
- Tradeoffs
- What’s the minimum?
- “Big rocks”
- “Not” List
- Guiding Principles
- Resources / Constraints
Factors / Approaches / Techniques
- Innovation Games
- Metaphor
- Mini-design studios (e.g., to explore shared understanding of “commitment”)
- Sliders
- Ranking
- “Not” List / In-Out List
- Sr. and other management present
- No iteration 0 [get going instead]
- -or-
- Iteration zero that includes a skinny end-to-end “Hello World”
- Timeboxes
- Quickstart approach
- Experimentation
- Inception Deck
Thanks to all who participated!