What are plays and playbooks?
A few companies have successfully navigated the high uncertainty of new technologies. Their reward is that they have dominated the technology revolution. However, these organizations have largely rejected the traditional twentieth century paradigms of management. They have succeeded by exploring new approaches. Above all, these successful technology companies have designed for scalability.
For the past decade I have been working with scaling technology organizations. These companies have become successful start-ups. In doing so they have built a product and a customer base. Then, their next step is rapidly growing and expanding the business. They find they need to address the challenges of how to scale revenue, customer base, and employee headcount.
I do not believe that there is any single recipe for scaling which can be applied across all organizations. If such a recipe existed, I would sell the solution (and some people do try to do exactly that as pre-defined frameworks). Trying to apply a set of fixed rules to transform a complex organization is likely to get poor results.
Successful scaling requires designing for scalability
Learning
Although there is no single recipe, I do believe that there are some good practices. Each Play on this site suggests a specific strategy which I have found useful with scaling organizations. The overall theme of all of the Plays is designing for scalability. The end goal for a scaling company is to achieve repeatable delivery at a sustainable pace.
I have worked with organizations who are struggling with scaling. Through my work with those organizations I have found that some specific good practices have been useful. I find myself here almost unconsciously mirroring the language of the Agile Manifesto. The Manifesto, as we will see later, talks in terms of learning by doing.
Uncovering better ways … by doing it and helping others do it
Manifesto for Agile Software Development
In sports, especially US sports, each successful sports team compiles a set of strategies or “Plays”. These choices give the team potential solutions to different match situations. In a match, the team chooses Plays as appropriate to gain advantage.
I’m reusing this terminology here. A Playbook is the team’s collection of strategies. On this site, you can collect Plays into your own personalised Playbook for reference.
Good practices
The Plays on this site are a set of strategies which have proved effective in the past. As with a sports team, they may not all apply to your immediate needs. They are not a recipe which you can follow in sequence adding exactly the right amount of ingredients. No sports team ever won by simply running through the playbook in order.
Remember that there are no “right answers”. There are only “good practices” which have been seen to be helpful in the past. By “doing it and helping others do it” you will learn about these and fit them to your own situation. Discard, modify and reshape to suit your situation. These are Plays, not recipes.
While the group believes that a set of common purposes and principles will benefit the users of agile methodologies, we are equally adamant that variety and diversity of practices are necessary. When it comes to methodologies, each project team is different—there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith 2001
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