Intro
Planning the new year is super-important for a team. The team reflects about past achievements, but also plans the coming quarters.
It gives:
- focus and
- strengthens the bonding between team members
Example Agenda
Here's an ageda I've used in the past. Your mileage may vary.
- 1000-1015: Review last year: Achievements
- 1015-1030: Last year in numbers from a product perspective
- 1030-1100: Product goals for this new year
- 1100-1130: Purpose of team
- 1130-1200: Development areas
- 1200-1300: Team Lunch
- 1300-1315: Architecture now
- 1315-1415: Technical things we have to tackle
- 1415-1445: Draft an agile roadmap
- 1445-1500: ROTI
Some ideas how to run the meeting
The kickoff should not be a one man show. It should be interactive. Anyone should participate, speak up and contribute.
Achievements (15 mins)
Use a whiteboard The whiteboard has a line with months that represents the last year.
Team members get post-its and put and write down achievements. They put them next to the month where the achievement took place.
At the end the moderator explains briefly what happened when. Anyone can comment.
Last year in numbers from a product perspective (15 mins)
Product shows the usage numbers of the last year. Churn. New customers. Customer satisfactoin. The last yaer in numbers from a product perspective.
Product goals for this new year (30 mins)
Purpose of team (30 mins)
A big whiteboard. Let's answer the question: Why and what are we doing in the first place? What is our mission and vision for the team?
Again. Anyone gets post its and the purpose is collected. Ideally a mission statement is being written and put into the wiki.
Development areas (30 mins)
Big whiteboard with the question: "Where do we as a team want to be at the end of the year?" Examples:
- Less bugs
- Better monitoring
- Improve AWS knowledge
Team lunch (1h)
Do it jointly. Go to a nice restaurant. Ideally the company pays for the expenses.
Architecture now (15 mins)
Quick recap how the architecture looks like right now. Might be a good refresher for everyone.
Technical things we have to tackle (1h)
Every engineer gets 10 minutes to collect technical things that need to be addressed on a post-it.
Engineer after engineer comes to the whiteboard and puts the post-its on the board. While putting the post it on the board the engineer discusses the topics and highlights why it is important.
Moderator tries to cluster the topics. There will be duplicates.
Optional: Dot voting to rank the importance of the clusters.
Draft an agile roadmap (1h 30 mins)
The moderater and the team moves the post-its from the "Development areas", "Technical things we have to tackle" and "Product goals" areas to a roadmap. Arrange items on a line that represents the new year. Make sure you got a good balance between technical and product topics.
Ideally you only have product related topics, but realistically you sometimes have purely technical topics.
ROTI (15 mins)
Get feedback and make sure your next meetings are even better.
Conclusion
Do the kickoff every year. Then follow up on the roadmap every quarter.