How Amanda Barber builds a shared understanding with her teams using the Atlassian Team Playbook
Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2024 by featuring @Amanda Barber, a Product Manager, Community Leader, and Atlassian Team Playbook enthusiast. Amanda loves how easy the Team Playbook is to understand and facilitate. We hope you’re inspired by her experience running Plays and her top learnings on building a shared understanding with her teams.
Hi, I’m Amanda, a Product Manager at a small educational technology company. Being at a small company means I wear many hats and often find myself straddling multiple teams. Most often, my work intersects with our Engineering and Customer Success teams.
I am part of 2 teams - pretty evenly split. I spend about half of my time with the engineering team (made up of 2 backend engineers, 3 frontend engineers, 2.5 DevOps engineers, and an engineering manager); and the other half of my time is spent with the CX/Product teams (2 customer success managers, 2 customer support folks, our UX designer, and myself - Product Manager). Our entire company is about 30 people and these two teams make up over half of the company.
How I heard about the Atlassian Team Playbook
As I was getting my feet wet in my new role as a project manager using Jira, I joined the Atlassian Community in 2021. In March 2023, I participated in the Team Playbook Certification (that’s no longer offered.) The feedback I received from that process was invaluable to my growth in running plays with my teams. After completing that certification, I really became invested in the Team Playbook since the plays are easy to understand, follow, tweak for my own purposes, and run with my teams.
Early success running Plays
In the fall of 2022, my engineering team completed User Manuals individually and shared them at a team Lunch and Learn. Following that positive experience, all other teams in my company completed User Manuals. The User Manuals were then used at our next company-wide retreat for a variety of tasks in April 2023.
For the Team Playbook Certification, I completed and recorded a project retrospective following the steps in the Playbook. My team has regular, bi-weekly retrospectives, but this was the first project-specific retro we had completed in quite some time. Project retros are now more common after starting them for the certification which has been a great practice to put in place!
Most recently, I ran the Roles and Responsibilities Play with my Customer Success/Product team.
Clarifying roles and responsibilities
I ran the Roles & Responsibilities Play to ensure the CX and Product teams were aligned and had a deeper understanding of what each part of our larger team is responsible for. We’ve had some changes to our team structure over the last few months and this play helped us ensure no responsibilities were dropped/missing, while also gaining a better understanding of each sub-team’s core responsibilities.
Top learnings from running the Play
The pre-work is important - give your team enough time to really reflect on their responsibilities - especially if the responsibilities change throughout the year (as they do with a school-year product cycle.)
This is an ongoing process - don’t do this play once and leave it to sit untouched. Make a plan to revisit the play and either make tweaks or completely start anew within 3-6 months. Refer back to the knowledge gained from running the play and ensure everyone knows where to find it and reference it.
Make the Play work for you and your team. The Plays are a fantastic starting place, but be prepared (and know your team’s needs) before running the play so you can pivot as needed.
Tips for running the Play
Prepare to run the Play by fully understanding all of the key steps, but be ready to pivot and make the Play fit your team’s style/personalities/needs.
What’s next?
In January, this same team will be running the Team Poster Play after revisiting/revising/updating our User Manuals. At the upcoming company retreat in April, teams will be completing the Network of Teams Play, as well.
Amanda’s ‘Team Playbook’ Short List
💙 Favorite Atlassian value?
Be the change you seek - nothing changes if nothing changes, so I like to aim to constantly improve our ways of working.
🏫 Favorite place you’ve worked?
My current company - GradeCam! - which is closely tied to my last position at a local elementary school as a Kindergarten teacher. I miss teaching, but love the flexibility of my new career, as well as all I’ve been fortunate to learn these last 3 years!
📖 What do you love most about the Atlassian Team Playbook?
Ease of use and adaptability to fit teams of all shapes and sizes.
🎮 A routine or ritual you’ve created with your team that you love
Playing online games like CodeNames together to connect as a remote team.
Thanks, @Amanda Barber! Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn, or ask Amanda your top questions running Plays in the comments. Learn more about the Atlassian Team Playbook.
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