Planning the Liftoff

Once you’re ready to begin planning a project liftoff, ask yourself, your planning group, the team, or the business, these questions:

• What did you learn from the retrospectives on previous liftoffs?

• What will create the best starting point for everyone involved?

• Is this a single-team product or service, a single-team project, or a multiteam program or initiative?

• What will the team (or teams) need to start well?

• Whose support is essential to the success of our effort? Which key stakeholders should we invite?

• How much of the liftoff will the executives and sponsors attend?

• Will the team need new skills?

• Will the team need new knowledge?

• Where do we anticipate challenges in communication and information flow? How can we begin to address those during the liftoff?

• Have we identified all the right team members for cross-functional work?

• What are the known issues or constraints?

• What are the known unknowns?

• What tone do we want to set?

• Is it likely that new information or ideas will emerge during the liftoff? If so, how open should we be to adapting our plan for the liftoff?

• How will we continue to improve our liftoffs?

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Your work is unique. Use these questions as a guide to develop your own set of locally specific questions to ask. Your answers will help you frame the format and scope of liftoff that you need.

Liftoffs follow a variety of formats, depending on need. It could be a one-day work session or a week-long boot camp. It could include discussions, training, and preparational sessions spread over a few weeks. Consider the complexity and uncertainty associated with your effort and base the liftoff format and duration on the degrees of difficulty.

Many factors influence the duration and content:

• Team members’ familiarity with one another

• Team members’ background in the domain

• The technical learning curve

• The degree of agreement about the approach

• The degree of certainty about the technology

Liftoffs start by clarifying the broad outlines and intentions for the work. They can also include other planning, team-building, or skill-development activities. Agendas can include agile team chartering sessions or practice boot camps.

Agenda

After answering the planning questions, use your answers to sketch a rough overview of the liftoff. At its basic level, the liftoff is a meeting. You’ll need to make the usual decisions about the agenda, timing, and other meeting-planning factors.

Why will you bring everyone together? What are the main points you want to communicate to the team? Limit these to only a few.

What information do you want to gather from the team and others? How will you elicit useful ideas and diverse perspectives?

Will the team need skills training or team building? If so, coordinate with the coaches and trainers who’ll provide it. How will you schedule training into the liftoff?

What other content areas do you want to include in your liftoff? In the initial planning stage of the liftoff, include just the rough ideas you want to cover. In Chapter 3, ​Design a Great Liftoff for Your Team​ we’ll discuss the specifics of putting together a final agenda.

Duration

Next, think about the length of your liftoff. We’ve held half-day liftoffs, day-long liftoffs, and liftoffs that played out over a week or more. Liftoffs can occur in one continuous session or in a series of segments over many days. Liftoffs that include agile chartering always take at least a full day.

Look at the number of areas of content you need to cover plus the number of teams involved. Consider how familiar people are with the type of work. Forecast the amount of conflict or controversy you expect. As any of these factors increases (or familiarity decreases), increase your time estimate. Duration is both a planning and a design decision. Negotiate a balance and refine the duration based on your design.

A liftoff concludes when the following conditions are met:

• The sponsor, product manager, and core team have committed to a common purpose.

• The sponsor, product manager, and core team have shared an initial understanding of success.

• The core team agrees on an initial approach to work, including agreements on work behaviors.

• The core team has discussed its members’ interdependence, skills, and potential.

• The core team has enough initial understanding of business needs to begin the work.

• The sponsor recommits to invest in the work.

Following an agile chartering model provides an efficient and effective way for teams to accomplish these outcomes. In Chapter 4, ​Smooth the Path to Performance with Agile Chartering​ you’ll look at how to incorporate agile chartering into your liftoff.

Participants

The liftoff should include anyone who has a primary stake in any part of the work—execution, deliverables, outcomes, or impacts. Each adds value to the liftoff. Sponsors, core team members, product managers, customers, and people who will act as resources for the team all add valuable perspective and information. They might participate for the whole session or only for the parts where they can add the most value. For example, the executive admin who coordinates the meetings and sign-offs on executive discussions and funding can affect the core team’s performance and provide helpful feedback.

This isn’t the place for people who are simply curious about the work. They can learn later about what happened. Think broadly about all individuals and parties who will have an impact. Who might be essential to success?

For the purposes of this book, we use the following terms to refer to certain team members. The sponsor is the person who decided to spend the budget, assign people, and commit resources. The sponsor says, “Let’s do this!” and gives permission to continue throughout the project. A sponsor might continue to serve the project as the product manager. Other times, the sponsor might turn over that responsibility to someone else.

The product manager holds ultimate responsibility for delivering both business value and customer value. Unless your sponsor chooses to kill the project, the product manager is the person who’ll say, “We’ve come to the end. Let’s stop!” Other titles for product manager are product owner and on-site customer.

The core team takes responsibility for building the product, and stakeholders contribute time, resources, and information, as needed. Stakeholders might receive handoffs, information, and deliverables from the team in return. Teams and stakeholders might share dependencies, though it’s discouraged. Team leads, team coaches, and Scrum masters support the core team on a daily basis. In some organizations, project managers join the supporting group.

Table 1 lists roles and activities of team members in a typical liftoff meeting.

Logistics

People very often underestimate the importance of logistical decisions. These important decisions include choosing meeting rooms and location, scheduling dates and timing, securing supplies and equipment, selecting food and beverages, travel arrangements for participants, distance communication support, and any other noncontent factors. Your choices create the environment for the liftoff. They support or detract from the tone you hope to establish.

Take special care when planning a liftoff for a distributed team. Not only will you need the usual logistical support, but you might also need lodging, travel budgets, and, in some cases, translators. While it’s possible to lead a liftoff with remote participants, it increases the degree of difficulty manyfold. Bring everyone together whenever possible.

Every organization has its own scheme for logistics planning. Ensure that your planning group participates in the logistical decisions. Involve a facilities person in your planning; it’ll help you get the environment you want.

Recruit an Outside Facilitator

Give your liftoff the greatest chance at success. Recruit a facilitator who’s perceived as neutral by participants. Someone with strong facilitation skills will attend to the process, not the content. The facilitator will give valuable help to plan the flow; keep meetings on track and attend to any interpersonal dynamics that arise; and lead group activities such as chartering, retrospectives, and open space. Having an outside facilitator allows the planners and team to focus on participating. Find someone with facilitation experience to match the complexity of the work. The more complex the work, the more you’ll want an experienced facilitator.