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Your Free Agile Playbook

Introduction

Every organization I've worked with that successfully transformed had one thing in common: a solid agile playbook. Not theory. Not borrowed frameworks that didn't quite fit. An actual playbook that teams could use.

Here's the problem I kept running into. Each time I joined a new organization, I had to recreate everything from scratch. Workshop guides. Facilitation tips. Best practices. The whole thing. And when organizations tried to transform without these resources? Things got messy fast.

So I'm sharing what works. These are the playbooks that have guided successful transformations across multiple organizations. Take them. Use them. Adapt them to fit your teams.

What You Get

Complete workshop guides covering core agile events and practices:

  • Sprint Planning, Review, and Retrospective

  • Daily Stand-ups that actually help

  • Story Refinement and Elaboration

  • Value Stream Mapping

  • Kaizen and Continuous Improvement

  • Operations Reviews

  • And more

Each guide includes:

  • Clear purpose and outcomes

  • Step-by-step facilitation instructions

  • Best practices and common mistakes

  • Preparation checklists

  • Reflection prompts for improvement

How to Use These

These documents are comprehensive by design. Some will feel long because I wanted to include everything you might need. Here's what I recommend:

Copy and adapt. Take what works for your context. Remove what doesn't. Adjust the language to fit your organization.

Share with your teams. If you're building a Lean Agile Center of Excellence, make these available. Better yet, create editable versions teams can customize themselves. That ownership increases adoption dramatically.

Make them yours. You don't need to credit me. You don't need permission. Just use them. If they help, send me a note on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear how it goes.

The Format That Works

This playbook format builds on work I started with Phil Rodgers at publicagile.org. Phil was brilliant at this stuff, far smarter than me, and together we created something valuable. I've expanded and refined these documents over time based on what actually works in real organizations.

Each guide follows the same structure, which makes them easy to scan and use. Teams know what to expect. Facilitators can prep quickly. Everyone gets aligned faster.

Start Using It

Pick one event your team runs regularly. Grab that guide. Try it in your next session. See what works. Adjust what doesn't. Then move to the next one.

That's it. No complex rollout needed. Just practical guides you can use starting today.

Program

Release Readiness Review

Comprehensive assessment where development teams, operations, business stakeholders, and leadership evaluate whether a major release is ready for production. This ceremony systematically checks technical quality, operational preparedness, and business readiness before committing to release dates.

Program

Program Health Check

Comprehensive assessment of program performance across delivery capability, team health, stakeholder satisfaction, and business value. This ceremony combines metrics with qualitative insights to give leadership a complete picture of program status and emerging challenges.

Team

Value Stream Mapping Workshop Guide

Visual workshop where teams map out the entire flow of value from customer request to delivery, identifying waste and improvement opportunities. This guide helps facilitators lead sessions that reveal where time and effort really go.

Team

Kanban Replenishment Workshop Guide

Focused session for teams to review work in progress, pull new items into the flow, and maintain healthy throughput. This guide ensures the team has just enough work queued up without creating bottlenecks or overload.

Program

Architecture Review Sync

Technical coordination meeting where system architects and technical leads align architectural decisions across multiple teams. This session ensures design coherence, resolves technical conflicts, and manages architectural dependencies for programs with multiple development teams.

Program

Program Planning

Strategic planning session where multiple agile teams coordinate their individual planning efforts into a cohesive program-level plan. This ceremony aligns teams around shared business objectives, manages dependencies, and establishes realistic delivery commitments across teams.

Team

Sprint Planning Workshop Guide

Collaborative session where the team commits to what they will build in the next sprint by selecting work and figuring out how to deliver it. This guide walks through creating a realistic plan that balances priorities with team capacity.

Program

Program Risk and Impediment Review Facilitation Guide

Proactive session where teams and leadership identify, assess, and address risks and blockers that could impact program success. This ceremony creates transparency around challenges spanning multiple teams and ensures leadership can make informed decisions about risk mitigation.

Program

Systems Demo

Regular coordination meeting where representatives from multiple agile teams share progress, manage dependencies, and resolve blockers. This ceremony keeps teams aligned on shared objectives while maintaining their independent sprint cycles and delivery cadence.

Team

Sprint Review Workshop Guide

End-of-sprint demo where the team shows completed work to stakeholders and gathers feedback. This guide helps facilitators run reviews that build stakeholder trust while keeping the focus on working software, not slide decks.

Team

Kaizen Workshop Guide

Continuous improvement workshop where teams identify small, incremental changes that add up to significant results. Get practical steps for facilitating sessions that build a culture where everyone looks for ways to work smarter.

Enterprise

Portfolio Sync / Lean Portfolio Review

The complete guide to running effective story refinement sessions. Transform messy backlog items into sprint-ready stories your team actually understands. Includes facilitation scripts, common mistakes to avoid, and techniques that work for teams of any size. Whether you're a Product Owner prepping for your first refinement session or a Scrum Master looking to level up your facilitation game, this guide gives you everything you need to make refinement sessions productive instead of painful.

Team

Story Refinement Workshop Guide

Regular backlog refinement session where the Product Owner and team clarify upcoming work so it is ready for sprint planning. This guide ensures stories are clear, sized, and understood before the team commits to building them.

Program

Program Retrospective

Cross-team reflection session where multiple agile teams and leadership examine systemic patterns, dependencies, and organizational impediments that individual team retrospectives cannot address. This ceremony focuses on program-wide improvements that require coordinated action.

Program

Business Value Review

Strategic session where teams and stakeholders examine whether development efforts are creating real business impact. Move beyond feature delivery to assess actual outcomes, learn from market feedback, and adjust priorities based on results rather than assumptions.

Team

Sprint Retrospective Workshop Guide

Dedicated time for the team to reflect on what is working and what is not, then commit to specific improvements for the next sprint. This guide provides facilitation techniques that turn retrospectives into real change, not just complaints.

Team

Customer Feedback Review Workshop Guide

A structured approach for teams to gather, analyze, and act on customer feedback systematically. Learn how to turn customer insights into actionable product improvements that strengthen relationships and drive better outcomes.

Program

Cross Team Sync (Scrum of Scrums)

Regular coordination meeting where representatives from multiple agile teams share progress, manage dependencies, and resolve blockers. This ceremony keeps teams aligned on shared objectives while maintaining their independent sprint cycles and delivery cadence.

Team

Daily Standup Workshop Guide

Quick daily sync where the team aligns on progress, plans, and blockers in 15 minutes or less. This guide helps facilitators run focused standups that keep work visible and teams connected without wasting time.

Got something on your mind? I'm always up for a good conversation about what's working (and what's not). If you want to chat about:

  • Implementing human-centered AI

  • Transforming your organization

  • Your leadership challenges

  • Agility and how it might apply

 

Or maybe you'd just like to connect. I read every email personally and I'd love to hear from you and usually respond with a day or two.

Thanks,

~Steve

  • LinkedIn

Contact Steve

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