Category: Articles
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Team Liftoffs Lounge: Pre-Rubicon Reading Material
The rubicon represents the moment of commitment to a course of actions. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, he broke Roman law and sealed the fate of the Republic. The Rubicon was a small river marking the northern boundary of Italy, and generals were forbidden to lead their armies across it under…
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Mini articles inspired by Liftoff
Jim and Melissa York have written a series of mini articles which explore some of the key concepts of a Liftoff: What is a product vision? What is a team mission? What is a mission test? It’s always refreshing to read what other people write about these elements, because there’s always an opportunity to learn…
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Heilmeier Catechism
George H. Heilmeier, a former DARPA director (1975-1977), crafted a set of questions known as the “Heilmeier Catechism” to help Agency officials think through and evaluate proposed research programs. The keen observer may notice that a good liftoff ensures that such questions are also answered, and collaboratively. What’s also interesting is that the removal of…
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Can you do a Liftoff in stages?
Technically, yes! We believe it’s best to run a Liftoff as a consecutive two-day event, but it is possible to do it in stages. For example, I once facilitated a Liftoff in two parts: first, I worked through the Purpose section with leadership and team, then a couple of weeks later, we covered Alignment and Context with just the…
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What’s the difference between Team Chartering and a Team Liftoff?
Team chartering is what we believe is the minimum chartering required to successfully start a project or endeavour together with a team. We define this as chartering the purpose, the alignment and the context. The purpose, alignment and context serve as a triad that compliment each other. It is a minimum because, as can be…
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First Draft of a Liftoff Miro Template
This is the first draft of the Miro template and is really an attempt to bring together all the key activities into one single view. I’ve entered around the Purpose-Alignment-Context Triad, and then per circle we see quite visually that there are three key activities. And here we have a reference to the Pattern Language…
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Liftoff with a view!
I’ve been re-reading Liftoff whilst here on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. It’s always a joy to re-read an important book, and this time with new eyes, with the aim to support others. Naturally there were new things that I learned this time round, that I hadn’t noticed previously, or perhaps didn’t have…