Introducing the Atlassian Team Playbook
Working with a team is hard, especially over time and across great distances. Of course, there are many great tools we can use to make that work easier. But tools alone aren’t enough, so we created a playbook to help our own teams work better together. We’ve been using, revising and experimenting with this playbook for quite awhile now, and it’s been a terrific and ongoing help. Which got some Atlassians to thinking, this playbook could help pretty much any team.
So, in order to be true to our values and to keep evolving our mission to unleash the potential of every team, we’re sharing that playbook with you!
Introducing…
This playbook, and the plays within, when combined with the simple and incredibly powerful Health Monitor, allow us to collaborate better, improve our processes and unleash the potential in our own teams.
As of a month or so ago, we’ve made our playbook available to you, to anyone who wants to unleash the potential of their own teams.
Improving teamwork, by design
You might be wondering how this all came about? Well, the short answer is that Atlassians spend a lot of time thinking about how we can empower teams to be their best. And that very much includes our own teams. We also have a very solid set of values that we strive to live by in our day to day work.
Two of those values are “play, as a team” and “be the change you seek.” A few years back, a group of designers got together and had a think, a lot of thinks, about how we could work better together. As a large, distributed and cross-functional workforce made up of many linked teams, you can imagine the challenge involved. As with most things, it started small and scrappy and experimental.
Give your team a checkup
A great way to get started is by running a Health Monitor. A Health Monitor is, essentially, a workshop that’s geared to give you some insight and introspection into how your team, or project, is doing. They’re fairly straight forward and easy enough to run, but also full of real value. Simply the intention of checking and monitoring the health of your team can reveal areas for improvements that you might have never known about.
Create a game plan for improvement
Once you’ve assessed your health you’ll get into the fun stuff: running plays. There are all kinds of plays, and what you’ll run really depends on the areas you’ve identified in the Health Monitor, or the particular needs of your team or project.
For example, you might be kicking off a design sprint and need to set expectations for what you’ll be doing and how you’ll measure your outcome. A project poster might be great for that. That may lead you on to a 5 whys exercise or running a contextual inquiry or to do an experience canvas. If you’re familiar with design sprinting, many of our plays will be familiar.
Give it a shot
While there’s no guarantee that our Team Playbook will solve all your team related problems, we firmly believe in the value of checking in on your teams and, if you uncover room for improvement, these plays can be a great place to start. As you might expect, we use these plays all the time, and are constantly working to iterate, improve and add new ideas. We’d love for you to play along with us! Give the Playbook a try and let us know what you think!
To learn more about working as a team, and to get a lot of insight into the Playbook and our philosophy on teamwork, check out our new publication Smells Like Team Spirit, read the announcement and give it a follow.
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