Praise for Dynamic Reteaming Heidi’s wisdom will change how you think about, form, re-form, and partici- pate in teams. Her stories, whether from the three successful startups she’s guided through hypergrowth or the dozens of teams she’s interviewed across the globe, delineate the power, intelligence, and joy of reteaming. If you seek a healthier, happier, more harmonious approach to teaming, study this book. —Joshua Kerievsky, Industrial Logic, author of Refactoring to Patterns I used to think, in fact I was certain, that long-lived teams with very stable membership were the best way for software development organizations to deliver fantastic software. Heidi and her book encouraged me to challenge and reevaluate this notion. She explains the many perspectives, virtues, and advantages of deliberately and thoughtfully changing up teams. This book is a must for software development leaders looking to create a development culture of engagement, connectedness, resilience, and opportunity. —Chris Smith, head of product delivery at Redgate Software For most of us, our image of teamwork needs to be updated—the stable, familiar groups of people who learn how to work together well are being replaced by fluid, porous teams that have to work together in new ways. Hel- fand provides inspiration and practical insights for how to do this well. —Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business School, author of Teaming and The Fearless Organization Building effective teams is hard. A good team is a dynamic thing that changes all of the time. Understanding this and using it to help to guide your team is a cornerstone of any approach to continuous improvement. Heidi’s book describes powerful, real-world patterns based on her extensive experience that will help you to reflect on what is happening in your team and give you a guide for what to do next. —Dave Farley, coauthor of Continuous Delivery If you want to weather the comings and goings, the hits and misses, the ups and downs of team life, this book is the guide. If you want to understand a more accurate and complex model of team life cycles, read deep from this book. Drawn from experience with her real engineering and product devel- opment teams, Heidi is the voice of engineers. She stands up for what they need in team life and offers sage advice for organizations who want to give it to them so they can create products that matter. —Lyssa Adkins, coach of difficult problems, and author of Coaching Agile Teams High-performing teams are simultaneously powerful and fragile. Changes to the team can quickly disrupt their flow, but can also bring new insights and better ways of working in the long run. Dynamic Reteaming is a funda- mental book for anyone involved in the fine art of balancing team evolution with team health in the real world. The author’s immense experience is in full display here, backed by meaningful examples and concrete patterns. —Manuel Pais, coauthor of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow Like it or not, knowledge work is a team sport. The essence of being a pro- fessional knowledge worker, then, is the ability to be a good team player. But how does one engage on a team when teams today are undergoing constant change? Isn’t “change” the opposite of “team”? The established Agile para- digm is to try and stabilize teams as much as possible, but this advice flies in the face of the reality that most of us experience. That’s where Heidi comes in. Rather than to resist team change, she teaches us to embrace it. Recognize your context, apply appropriate patterns, and watch outcomes fol- low. Especially here, in early 2020, the idea of what a team is and what it means to be on a team is evolving. Thankfully, Heidi is here to help us. —Daniel S. Vacanti, CEO of Actionable Agile, and author of When Will It Be Done? and Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability “Whether you like it or not, teams are going to change. You might as well get good at it.” This is the premise of Heidi’s book, which is a treasure trove of stories and anecdotes from practitioners from all over the world. The author brings to life her extensive research coupled with deep personal experience. I highly recommend this book as a source of inspiration and guidance for anyone working with teams in a world of change. —Sandy Mamoli, Nomad8, coauthor of Creating Great Teams For organizations building software-enabled services today, the team is the fundamental means of delivery. But a team is not a loose collection of indi- viduals with the same manager; instead, a team has a shared goal, shared working practices, and shared sense of purpose. Above all, a team needs to nurture and develop its ways of working, its very being. This is where Dynamic Reteaming by Heidi Helfand is so valuable: this book provides tried and tested techniques for helping to nurture and evolve a team over time. Changes to team composition can be disruptive, but the Dynamic Reteaming patterns provide ways to turn these changes into positive experiences for individuals, teams, and organizations. This team-first book is vital for every organization today. —Matthew Skelton, coauthor of Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow There is no question that the future belongs to the curious learner. I can easily say that the future belongs to Heidi Helfand and those lucky ones that are her students. In Dynamic Reteaming, Heidi takes on some important big ideas with great wisdom, humility, and curiosity. We are all better for her efforts. Read, learn, experiment, grow! —Richard Sheridan, Menlo Innovations, author of Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer Dynamic Reteaming SECOND EDITION The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams Heidi Helfand Dynamic Reteaming by Heidi Helfand Copyright © 2020 Reteam, LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected]. Acquisitions Editor: Melissa Duffield Proofreader: Kim Cofer Development Editor: Melissa Potter Indexer: nSight, Inc. Production Editor: Kate Galloway Interior Designer: Monica Kamsvaag Copyeditor: Piper Editorial Cover Designer: Randy Comer Illustrators: Kristin Romano and Rebecca Demarest July 2020: Second Edition Revision History for the Second Edition 2020-06-11: First Release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781492061298 for release details. The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The cover image and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Dynamic Reteaming is a trademark of Reteam, LLC. The views expressed in this work are those of the author, and do not represent the publisher’s views. While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the infor- mation and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author dis- claim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instruc- tions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights. 978-1-492-06129-8 [LSI] Contents | Foreword by John Cutler ix | Foreword by Diana Larsen xi | Preface xv PART I | What Is Dynamic Reteaming? 1 | The Evolution of Teams 3 2 | Understanding Teams 11 3 | The Power of Team Assignment 19 4 | Reduce Risk and Encourage Sustainability 31 PART II | Dynamic Reteaming Patterns 5 | One-by-One Pattern 39 6 | Grow-and-Split Pattern 69 7 | Isolation Pattern 91 8 | Merging Pattern 103 9 | Switching Pattern 123 vii viii | CONTENTS 10 | Anti-Patterns 137 PART III | Tactics for Mastering Dynamic Reteaming 11 | Adapt Your Organization for Dynamic Reteaming 153 12 | Plan Your Dynamic Reteaming Initiative 177 13 | After Dynamic Reteaming: Transitions and Team Cali- brations 187 14 | Reflect and Determine How to Shift 219 PART IV | Conclusion A | Whiteboards to Enable Open Dynamic Reteaming 233 B | Team Choice Marketplace 237 C | Survey Template 245 | Bibliography 247 | Index 253