About
What is the Playbook?
The Playbook defines how projects run at Agile Collective: lifecycle, roles, checkpoints, and core delivery expectations.
Why we created it
We created the Playbook to increase clarity and make it easier for everyone to do good work together. It helps us avoid reinventing the wheel, learn from experience, and create more consistent, high-quality outcomes for us and our clients.
How it’s used
The Playbook is a practical tool for day-to-day work. It provides a shared foundation for how we run projects, make decisions, and work together. People use it in different ways:
- Project Managers and Project Coordinator use it to set up and run projects, structure phases, and keep work on track.
- Project team members use it to understand how their work fits into each phase, and what’s expected of them at different points
- Account Managers and the New Work Team use it to shape and scope work before it starts.
- The Delivery Circle uses it to identify patterns across projects, draw on feedback from retrospectives and reviews, and update the Playbook to improve how we deliver work.
- New joiners use it to understand how we work and what good practice looks like.
It’s not something to follow step-by-step, but something to refer to when you need clarity, structure, or a starting point.
A living document
The Playbook reflects our current best thinking. It will continue to evolve as we learn from projects and test new approaches.
Roadmap
- Phase 1: Good enough to use on real projects
- Phase 2: Improve based on pilot feedback
- Phase 3: Extend as needed
Phase 1
The Playbook will launch when it has documented the following:
- Project lifecycle: phases, checkpoints, handovers, ownership and accountability, deliverables and docs / templates
- Core roles in delivery (eg PM, Design/Product, Tech, Ops)
- How projects run: initialisation, delivery expectations, handovers
- Minimum required artefacts (what needs to exist at each stage)
- Roll-out plan inc. team onboarding
- Plan for ongoing maintenance
Out of scope (for now):
- Detailed “how-to” methods (e.g. how to run a workshop)
- Specialist discipline role descriptions
- Organisation-wide strategy or HR processes
- Full technical standards / dev practices
Phase 1 Playbook structure (updated)
Homepage About the Playbook and how to use it (depending on your role)
Project lifecycle
- [Project phases] - full version
Roles and responsibilities
- [Key roles]
Ways of working / Cross-project practices / Standards
- [eg, managing scope, estimation, handovers, communication]
What will be added over time
As the Playbook evolves, it will include:
- How-tos for activities and processes
- Examples from real projects
- Guidance for different contexts. Variations in how we apply our approach depending on project type, size, or client
- Feedback loops and improvements. Ongoing updates based on retrospectives, project reviews, and Delivery Circle input.
- More templates
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