Starting up an Agile team is one of the first things you might be asked to do when a company wants to “go Agile.” What do you need to know before starting up a team? In the start-up, how much do teams need to know about Agile before they “go”? What do they need to know about each other…what the project is all about…who they will become as a team? These and other questions are answered as we walk through good ways to start-up Agile teams.

The design goal for Scrum teams is 5 to 10 times waterfall performance yet the majority of Scrum teams never achieve this goal. A pattern is emerging at MySpace in Beverly Hills and Jayway in Sweden, for bootstrapping high performance Scrum teams. Rigorous implementation by an experienced coach creates a total immersion experience akin to Shock Therapy. Unfortunately, management disrupts hyperproductive teams by removing key resources. Velocity data is provided on five teams at MySpace and one team at Jayway where management repeatedly “killed the golden goose.”