What do you think?
Rate this book
Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams & Projects
Liftoff-it's the unexplored, often ignored, Agile project practice. As the first act of flight, a rocket launch requires an entire set of systems to lift the vehicle into orbit-not just the vehicle itself, but all the systems needed for smoothly moving off the ground into space. Likewise, your project needs its entire set of supporting systems in place to begin a successful journey to delivery. Whatever you call it (project kickoff, bootcamp, inception, or jump start), liftoff gives your team its trajectory, and launches your project. This critical practice informs, inspires, and aligns everyone to a singular purpose: the successful delivery of software. This success is in your hands! Agile veterans Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies teach you how to organize and conduct liftoffs, hold team activities to discover what's most important, and offer a working framework for effective and lightweight agile chartering.
179 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2011
54 people are currently reading
537 people want to read
About the author
Diana Larsen
14 books30 followersVisionary pragmatist, Diana Larsen, wears many hats. To serve her professional communities, Diana delivers inspiring conference keynotes, talks, and workshops around the world. She shares the wisdom she’s gained in more than three decades of working with leaders, teams, and organizations.
A prolific contributor to readers who seek to improve leadership and team development, Diana co-authored pivotal books, including:
Lead without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams (2022)
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great (first and second editions. 2006, 2022)
Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams (second edition. 2016)
Five Rules for Accelerated Learning (2014)
The Agile Fluency Model: A Brief Guide to Success with Agile, an ebook. (2019)
A model maker, she co-originated the Agile Fluency® model as well as several other models about aspects of leadership, learning, and teams.
As a consultant, mentor, and coach of coaches, the continuing thread in her career has been a focus on team learning and leaders who “learn out loud” to support their teams and organizations. She co-founded and led FutureWorks Consulting and Agile Fluency Project. She serves as an advisor to Retrium, Inc., and on the advisory board of the Organization Design Forum.
Find out more about Diana’s latest escapades at dianalarsen.com and agilefluency.org Find her on social media at Twitter @DianaOfPortland and LinkedIn.
A prolific contributor to readers who seek to improve leadership and team development, Diana co-authored pivotal books, including:
Lead without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams (2022)
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great (first and second editions. 2006, 2022)
Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams (second edition. 2016)
Five Rules for Accelerated Learning (2014)
The Agile Fluency Model: A Brief Guide to Success with Agile, an ebook. (2019)
A model maker, she co-originated the Agile Fluency® model as well as several other models about aspects of leadership, learning, and teams.
As a consultant, mentor, and coach of coaches, the continuing thread in her career has been a focus on team learning and leaders who “learn out loud” to support their teams and organizations. She co-founded and led FutureWorks Consulting and Agile Fluency Project. She serves as an advisor to Retrium, Inc., and on the advisory board of the Organization Design Forum.
Find out more about Diana’s latest escapades at dianalarsen.com and agilefluency.org Find her on social media at Twitter @DianaOfPortland and LinkedIn.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
May 23, 2019
The theory was good. The case studies were the best bet. The agendae for sessions will be useful. But this little book was SO hard to read. Very dry and academic, especially after reading a run of 'agile' books. It's worth having on your bookshelf but don't try read it for enjoyment.
February 20, 2012
Everyday teams are asked to start work on projects that they don't
have a clear understanding about. Many times they don't even know why
the project exists in the first place. Agile project lift offs
establish the alignment necessary to define the working relationships
and community necessary to build the momentum to achieve success. If
you are starting a new project or have one that is currently off
course the battle tested methods provided apply to any project to help
ensure success.
have a clear understanding about. Many times they don't even know why
the project exists in the first place. Agile project lift offs
establish the alignment necessary to define the working relationships
and community necessary to build the momentum to achieve success. If
you are starting a new project or have one that is currently off
course the battle tested methods provided apply to any project to help
ensure success.
July 29, 2012
As I loved Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, the previous book of Diana. I had to read LiftOff. I did not regret it. She has done it again.
Think about the impact retrospectives have on (agile) teams.
Now think about how projects start. Although we all know that a good start of a project has a huge effect on how things are going, not many people know what "a good start" actually means.
This book will help you to create a good start of a your project.
And if you think it is too late(because your project has already started) don't worry, Diana & Ainsley will help you to do a re-start of your project.
For me this book, is a must read for everyone managing, coaching, supporting teams. (Agile or not)
Yves
Think about the impact retrospectives have on (agile) teams.
Now think about how projects start. Although we all know that a good start of a project has a huge effect on how things are going, not many people know what "a good start" actually means.
This book will help you to create a good start of a your project.
And if you think it is too late(because your project has already started) don't worry, Diana & Ainsley will help you to do a re-start of your project.
For me this book, is a must read for everyone managing, coaching, supporting teams. (Agile or not)
Yves
November 3, 2016
This book was recommended by an Agile expert on a conference and it helped me to organize my thoughts around the topic: vision and mission, team charter, form and start the project etc. Although the book has some useful content it is 5 times longer than it should be.
December 29, 2015
Do yourself a favor and practice what proposed in the book, especially if you think you don't need to start projects or charter teams in a different way to what you do today.
December 31, 2016
This was recommended to me by an Agile Coach. It was helpful in wrapping my mind around creating a vision vs a mission.
May 24, 2019
Liftoff is a nice and to the point book for learning how to structure the kick off meetings of an agile project. Its focus is on bringing the participants together and showing how to create a purpose and how to ensure everyone is on the same page when a project kicks off. Anyone who's ever lead a project and not had a good kickoff knows how much this can hamper building velocity in a project.
The why of each suggested section of the agenda is laid out and some sample activities are given, although the book doesn't go into great detail on how to facilitate. It leaves facilitation to other books and instead points to other resources to follow up on.
The book also includes several stories of successful kickoffs, but these feel more like an aside in the book. Because the stories are at a high level they didn't help illuminate the structure and tactics being talked about in the book and are instead meant to show that kick offs work. Which if you're reading the book likely isn't something you need.
The last part of the book is a couple example documents produced from actual kickoffs, which serve as a useful reference.
I did find the section on working agreements especially useful. I'd been exposed to the idea, but not in the form presented here of having a few agreements that the team agrees to as aspirations they want to hold themselves to. I like this formulation as I believe it'll make working agreements much easier to craft and useful for me and my teams going forward.
Overall this is a useful book for any looking to craft an agenda and meeting to successful launch a new project.
The why of each suggested section of the agenda is laid out and some sample activities are given, although the book doesn't go into great detail on how to facilitate. It leaves facilitation to other books and instead points to other resources to follow up on.
The book also includes several stories of successful kickoffs, but these feel more like an aside in the book. Because the stories are at a high level they didn't help illuminate the structure and tactics being talked about in the book and are instead meant to show that kick offs work. Which if you're reading the book likely isn't something you need.
The last part of the book is a couple example documents produced from actual kickoffs, which serve as a useful reference.
I did find the section on working agreements especially useful. I'd been exposed to the idea, but not in the form presented here of having a few agreements that the team agrees to as aspirations they want to hold themselves to. I like this formulation as I believe it'll make working agreements much easier to craft and useful for me and my teams going forward.
Overall this is a useful book for any looking to craft an agenda and meeting to successful launch a new project.
July 21, 2018
As described by Hackman, the most important aspect of team performance is defined at the beginning of work. This "setup" of the team can also be done when work has started, but has to be done deliberately.
In this book the authors suggest a set of activities for the team start, kick-off, launch, charter, liftoff or however you want to call it.
Activities for defining the Purpose, for creating the Alignment and describing the Context.
Good inspiration for future liftoffs.
In this book the authors suggest a set of activities for the team start, kick-off, launch, charter, liftoff or however you want to call it.
Activities for defining the Purpose, for creating the Alignment and describing the Context.
Good inspiration for future liftoffs.
June 15, 2021
I happened to re-read this book after a long time...and as much as this book made sense while I was a first-line manager, it made less sense now. So I guess, its right audience is first-time managers who are looking for some very specific "how to" guidance, especially applying ideas from agile software development into their projects.
February 27, 2018
It's a must-have, really helpful in facilitating liftoff meetings.
It gives a clear idea of what you HAVE to have in mind when you are approaching a startup phase, but it's also helpful in leading meeting along the way of a project.
It gives a clear idea of what you HAVE to have in mind when you are approaching a startup phase, but it's also helpful in leading meeting along the way of a project.
January 9, 2019
I found it a bit dry to read at times and had to take a break from reading it, but there are lots of useful things to try out
March 11, 2019
A little dry. Larson has written much better stuff around Agile than this. Decent framework but too prescriptive.
This is more of a reference book than a straight read-through.
This is more of a reference book than a straight read-through.
April 1, 2020
A good inspiration since I am currently designing a liftoff , but the book lacks depth in certain points. Nonetheless, I do not regret reading it and I will definitely use some parts in the future :)
June 17, 2018
I have mixed feelings aboout this book. The authors tried to setup a kickoff framework with proposed activities, as they did for "agile retrospective". But they were less successful here. I also should admit that I'm not a big fan of pre-ccooked practices. However, the framework is highly practical and it proved to be helpful in this kind of situation.
It's a quick read, with a very effective prose, therefore it's a good time investment.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici
It's a quick read, with a very effective prose, therefore it's a good time investment.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici
January 12, 2016
I learned about this book after helping a client design a set of guidelines for lifting off new teams as part of an Agile transformation. My beliefs in how to effectively liftoff teams seems very similar to Diana's so I didn't get many insights from reading it.
That said, if you're new to lifting off teams, or are a budding coach/scrum master, this is a great, easy to read reference guide. If you're an experienced coach or consultant, there are likely a couple of nuggets you could pickup from it but for me, it was mostly common sense.
That said, if you're new to lifting off teams, or are a budding coach/scrum master, this is a great, easy to read reference guide. If you're an experienced coach or consultant, there are likely a couple of nuggets you could pickup from it but for me, it was mostly common sense.
June 28, 2012
Before I was 10% into this book, I was already learning new practices I could put to work with my clients. As the authors point out, every day brings an opportunity for a team to lift off their work into a new realm of performance. The this book has a combination of great research into what makes teams start well, along with many valuable practices that you can call upon any time. This book can be a hard read at times, but it will be well worth any attention you can give it.
May 15, 2012
I see the value of this book not in reading it - I found it almost a bit of a struggle to actually dry-read it. It's real value is in doing a lift-offs, in chartering with your teams and there are great, clear, concise instructions in the book how to achieve that - so just pick the book and take a team through it.
April 17, 2015
Almost immediately after reading this book, I was able to out it into practice. I found immediate payback in helping teams creat visions, missions, and mission tests that they could rally around, rather than documents that sat on a shelf.
I found the book very readable, full of great information, and and I'm excited to apply it to a full chartering process as soon as I can.
I found the book very readable, full of great information, and and I'm excited to apply it to a full chartering process as soon as I can.
October 14, 2013
This book has two parts: the first part tells you how to go about planning a project kick-off meeting and the second part describes more in depth one of the activities in that meeting: the agile chartering process.
The bits it does cover are good and useful. I would have wanted to see more about release planning however: creating the initial backlog and release plan.
The bits it does cover are good and useful. I would have wanted to see more about release planning however: creating the initial backlog and release plan.
November 22, 2014
Great book, for Agile teams or for any other kind of team. Although Kindle version is quite awful.
Practices for setting the foundations of great team performance, from the beginning.
Must read for all team coaches.
Practices for setting the foundations of great team performance, from the beginning.
Must read for all team coaches.
June 17, 2014
If you are moving into Scrum and are looking into creating a dynamic self-organization this book can be a good help see also http://blog.crisp.se/tag/liftoff
January 11, 2014
Helpful book when starting with a new team on a new project. I really enjoyed reading it and can't wait to try some of it...
December 30, 2015
This was a great book for launching new teams or new projects. I appreciated the practical examples and outlines for creating my own kick-offs.
March 1, 2017
A great source when you need to kick off a new project, re-charge a project or simply try to flush out dysfunction...
This is one of my go to books to refresh techniques and stimulate next steps.
This is one of my go to books to refresh techniques and stimulate next steps.
August 6, 2016
Tends to be a bit on the academic/dry side, but a handful of important insights to carry forth in project leadership and software delivery.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews