Open Practice Library

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Foundation

The Mobius Loop

An iterative process model for rapidly developing digital products.

The Open Practice Library is organized around this model.

The buttons below will show you practices that fall on the relevant part of the loop.

“Mobius Loop” is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

$100 Prioritisation

To help groups prioritise anything

1-2-4-All

Tap into the wisdom of crowds

10-for-10

The ultimate brainstorming exercise!

15/5 Reports

Reporting for people who don't have time for reports

4Ls Retrospective

A team activity to understand what was liked, learned, lacked, and longed for at the completion of a sprint or project.

6 Dimensions of Discovery

Gather, document, sort and prioritise our challenges and bright spots across 6 dimensions.

AEIOU Observation Framework

A heuristic framework used for ethnographic observations.

Abstraction Laddering

Reconsider a problem statement by broadening or narrowing its focus

Action steps

Commit the first step towards action

Affinity Mapping

Identify insights, patterns and trends in research and ideas

Agile Agenda

A flexible way to manage the agenda for an in-person workshop.

Agile Health Check

A quick team assessment based on agile manifesto principles

Alternative Worlds

Use different perspectives to generate fresh ideas

An Elephant in the Room

To surface and address unspoken issues for improved team dynamics and progress.

Architectural Decision Records (ADR)

Open & Transparent Decision History

Autoscaling

Cloud native applications reacting to demand.

BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals)

Create compelling, long-term goal that can inspire and motivate groups of people to take action.

Backcasting / Pre-mortem (Premortem)

Performing a project or product premortem

Backlog Filter

Identify and action high complexity backlog items in any context.

Backlog Refinement

Understand, prioritise, and clarify items in the backlog to ensure they're ready to work on.

Behavior-Driven Development

Creating a shared understanding of requirements in product teams

Blameless Postmortem

Turn incident into an investment in future reliability

Blue Green Deployments

Always have a fall back solution

Burndown

Visualisation of work left to do within a specified time period

Burnup Chart

Burnup Chart main objective is to track the progress of a project over time.

Business Priorities Exercise

Get alignment on what will drive value and realise goals.

Bytesize Architecture Sessions

Iteratively collaborate to learn about your systems

C4 Architecture

Allows for simple layers of abstraction for different components of an architecture design

Canary Release

Exposing a small number of real users to a new version

Candy or Swag

Demonstrate the value of open organization principles like collaboration and transparency

Celebrating Failure

Raise the team's collective awareness of product failure root causes

Change Agenda

Capture and define the strategy changes or shifts that an organization or engagement needs to achieve in order to realize their desired outcomes

Chaos Engineering

Chaos engineering is a practice of testing distributed software that deliberately introduces failure and faulty scenarios to verify its resilience in the face of random disruptions.

Chase the State

Assess progress and the current state of any type of software delivery work in a holistic way

Check-ins

Foster deeper connections and belonging with simple questions

Code Review

Improve quality and knowledge sharing through collaboration and peer review.

Cognitive Loadometer

A simple tool to measure cognitive load and improve focus

Cognitive walkthrough

Make your service more useful

Cohort Analysis

Which group are you in?

Collaborative Pathways

Turning shared purpose into shared results

Comparing Concept Maps

Identify differences in team members' mental models

Confidence Voting

Gains consensus around a team's agreement or disagreement on the current activity, event or questions

Container

A software package that contains everything the software needs to run.

Continuous Delivery

Automated testing and releasing of software.

Continuous Deployment

Deploying changes more frequently to get faster end-user feedback.

Continuous Integration

Submit small, frequent changes instead of large, infrequent changes

Contract-First Development

Get agreement upfront when creating reusable services

Crazy 8s

A fast sketching exercise to generate solution ideas

Creativity Warmups

Break down mental barriers and stretch creative thought before ideating solutions

Cynefin Framework

Understand context complexity to make better decisions.

Daily Standup

A short time-boxed synchronization of the team activities that occurs in a cadence determined by the team

Dark Launches

Letting a small group of interested users test features before others

Defence in Depth

Layering security controls through your application

Definition of Done

Shared knowledge and understanding of what it means for a work item to be done by a team

Definition of Ready

Shared knowledge regarding what it means for a work item to be ready to be worked on

Design Retro : Active

Improve the quality and usability of your product design

Design Sprint

A five-day process for testing new ideas

Design The Box

From ideas to essential features and outcomes

Design of Experiments

Learn Fast, Move Even Faster

Disagree and Commit

The key to collaboration: enabling everybody to commit to action, without needing consensus.

Dissent Cards

Create an environment in which people can disagree in a productive way.

Docs As Code

Have the whole team deliver current, useful, documentation using the minimum of effort.

Document Review Process

Efficiently review documents in complex environments, avoid loops, and get a more predictable timeline.

Domain Storytelling

Learn domain language. Talk about requirements. Tell domain stories.

Dominating Forces

Surface risks and issues, identify metrics, and define the impact of strategy execution before it starts.

Dot voting

Quickly build consensus to prioritise available options

Double Diamond

A structured approach to tackle challenges in four phases, from exploring to taking focused actions.

Dual Track Delivery

A collaborative practice for developers and designers to build shared understanding in service of outcomes based delivery.

Emotional Journey

How users feel at each stage of the experience

Empathy Mapping

A collaborative tool for gaining insight about humans (customers, users, stakeholders, etc.).

Establish Shared Principles

Principles Over Practices

Event Modeling

To model Event-Driven Software Systems

Event Storming

A rapid, interactive approach to business process discovery and design that yields high quality models

Everything-as-Code

Save everything as code - configuration, infrastructure and pipelines

Example Mapping

Involving stakeholders in defining acceptance criteria

Expand and Contract Pattern

A pattern to help in modernisation and migration projects.

Experience Mapping for Agile

Understand individuals' actual experience through a process, to identify priorities from a new prespective

Experiment Canvas

Be specific with your idea experiments to improve scope, collaboration, and alignment

Feature Toggles

AKA Feature Flags/Bits/Flipping/Controls

Fire Drills

Increase the confidence of your Team by gamifying Incident Management.

Five Whys (5 Whys)

Get past the symptoms of a problem to the root cause

Fly on the Wall

A Crowdsourced Approach to Problem Solving

Force Field Analysis - Force Field Map

Understanding change/goals

Formal Relational Contract

Govern highly complex relationships that demand collaboration and flexibility which exist in an ecosystem

Funnel Analysis

Go all the way ... through the funnel

Futurespective

Looking to the future

GEMs

An alternative to OKRs (Objective Key Results) for those that think in experiments

GROW Model for 1-2-1 Coaching

The purpose of coaching is to unlock people's potential to maximise their performance, facilitate personal and professional development . Here's a tool to structure your coaching interaction.

GitOps

If it’s not in Git, it’s not real.

Group Launch - for Programs, Divisions and Departments

To successfully form and launch a group of interdependent teams by aligning them around a shared purpose, establishing clear workflows, clarifying decision-making authority, and fostering effective collaboration. This ensures the group operates cohesively to deliver customer value while managing organizational complexity.

Group Planning

Enable teams to adapt effectively to rapidly changing work environments by aligning with strategic goals, resolving dependencies, and addressing capacity constraints through continuous, short-cycle planning.

Guerilla Testing

Lean, agile and low-cost method of quickly capturing user feedback

Hackathon

A collaborative event; encouraging teams to come together and build solutions

Hello, World! networking event

Say "Hello" to the World and the World will say "Hello" to you!

Heuristic Evaluation

Provide expert review of UX designs

Hopes and Fears

Reveal your team's expectations and doubts before starting a new journey

How Might We _____ ?

Turning insights into questions that spur creative solutioning

How-Now-Wow Prioritization (Matrix)

Experiments Prioritization

I Have a Dream

Build deeper team relationships

Ice Breakers

Breaking barriers and connecting people

Idea Cyclone

Generate a massive volume of ideas in a structured, time-bound manner.

Impact & Effort Prioritization (Matrix)

Prioritization of Experiments

Impact Mapping

An engaging, graphical, strategic planning technique

Independent Service Heuristics (ISH)

Sparking collaborative conversations to identify software boundaries that facilitate fast flow.

InnerSource

Re-use code, collaborate, and use open practices inside your organisation.

Inter-Team Agreement

Enhance collaboration and value delivery across teams in remote/hybrid environments.

Is – Is not – Does – Does not

Provide a structured approach for clearly understanding and defining a problem, object, concept, or situation.

Iteration (Sprint) Planning

A collaborative meeting, where the Product Owner together with the team define the work and effort required to meet the Iteration (Sprint) goal.

Jobs to be Done

Focus on your customers underlying desires and motivation.

Kanban

Visualized workflow management method to maximize efficiency and become more agile.

Kanban Picture

The Kanban Picture suggests a "work dynamic" for teams starting with the Kanban Method.

Kanban Priorities

Prioritise tasks on the board before daily standup to facilitate better communication and team work

Kano Model

Easily visualize and explain the impact and priority of different features

Knowledge Sharing

Share what we know, and what we wish to learn.

Leaders Eat Last

Building Trust Between Leaders and Teams

Leadership Launch

Get strategic leadership focus with structured synchronous and asynchronous facilitation

Leadership Map

This practice creates actionable improvement backlogs while fostering authentic leadership development through powerful dialogue and collaborative problem-solving.

Lean Canvas

A 1-page business plan template to help you focus on problems, solutions, key metrics and competitive advantages.

Lean Coffee

Democratically generated agendas for more valuable conversations

Lean Inception

how to align people and build the right product via the MVP

Lean UX Workshop

Solve real problems for real users

Lean Value Tree

A simple tool to align people and initiatives across all levels of the business

Lego Labs

Experiment with processes for rapidly developing digital products. Go from problem to prototype with feedback and iterations while building a Colony on Mars (with legos)!

Lightning Decision Jam

A workshop to solve any problem, with any amount of people

Lightning Talks

Short, highly focused presentations

Limit Work in Progress

Pipes that aren't clogged increase the flow through the system

MBOs (Management by Objective)

Improves employee motivation and commitment.

MSPOTs (Mission, Strategy, Plays, Omissions & Targets)

Set product goals when you need to unite your team around a strategic vision.

Manage Flow

Optimize the processing work items

Means to End

Define and communicate Vision, Mission, Strategy, Goals, Tactics & Objectives

Measuring Psychological Safety

How to measure the Psychological Safety in teams and organisations

Meditación

Generar emociones positivas para el equipo y ayudar a desarrollar una mentalidad empática hacia los miembros del equipo.

Meditation

Generate positive emotions for the team and help to develop an empathetic mindset towards team members

Mentorship

Resource mentors and mentees with structured mentoring.

Metrics Based Process Mapping (MBPM)

Map your process in detail and collect key baseline metrics

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

MVP/ETP - Develop, Get feedback, Repeat

Mission Statements

Capture and define an inspirational purpose of an organization as the starting point of a strategy development process

MoSCow Method

The objective of using the MoSCoW method is to prioritize and categorize requirements or features based on their importance and relevance to a project.

Mob Programming

Like pair programming but with the whole team

Monte Carlo Simulation

Assess and manage project uncertainty and risk, enabling better decision-making and improving project outcomes.

Mood Board

Find and share inspiration for solutions, features, and/or design elements

Mood Marbles

A mechanism for gauging team sentiment

Motivation Mapping

Understanding the motivation

Moving Motivators

Uncover what motivates your colleagues and yourself

Mutation Testing

Mutation testing is used to design new software tests and evaluate the quality of existing software tests.

NCTs (Narrative, Commitment, Task)

Give more context around goals as to ‘why’ they were defined

Network Mapping

Build a network of relationships in your organization or team

News Headlines aka Cover Story

From idea to essential product features and outcomes

Niko Niko Calendar

Are a visual tool that helps managers and teams measure happiness and motivation (Mood).

Non-Functional Requirements Map

A collaborative approach for capturing non-functional requirements

North Star Framework

Helps achieve alignment on the 'why' and overall purpose.

Objectives & Key Results (OKRs)

Align people around a shared ambitious goal and then maintain focus through measuring progress regularly

Observability

Handling the unknown unknowns.

Offboarding

Practice destroying and re-creating your applications

One Minute Mindfulness

Calm the mind and body to help team members manage stress levels

One-Pager

Communicate objectives clearly, establish shared understanding and create enthusiasm for an initiative

One-word story

This practice sharpens the ability of a team to listen and progress collectively.

Open Decision Framework

How to make transparent, inclusive, and customer-centric decisions

Open Leader Persona

Identify the mindset, challenges, behaviours, and strengths of open leaders

Open Leadership Mindset

A specific fusion of behaviors and mindsets characterizes the next generation of leaders.

Opportunity Solution Tree

Show how your product solutions map back to a desired outcome

PESTEL Analysis

Understand your environment

Pair Programming

Increasing the knowledge sharing and communication between team members

Parking Lot (Car Park)

A visible area to help track important items, ideas, questions, and issues that may not be important to discuss at the time, but the group does wish to discuss later.

Personal User Manuals

Connecting with colleagues in a deep and meaningful way

Pick-Play-Pass

Gamify group engagement

Ping-Pong Programming

Where Pair Programming meets TDD

Plan Your Trip

Manage risks by considering the 4Cs: Costs, Consequences, Context, and Choices.

Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI +-?) Retro

A quick team retrospective, or way to evaluate ideas

Priority Sliders

Facilitate conversations about relative priorities to focus upcoming activities

Proto-Persona

Define your target users

Purpose to practice (P2P)

Enables stakeholders to collaboratively shape the success of their initiative.

Quote Wall

A collection of quotes or phrases captured from the team that may be motivational, inspiring, or down-right hilarious!

ROAM Boards

A Foundational Practice for Risk Management

Raison d'être

Defining the teams reason for being

Realtime Retrospective

Getting feedback faster and improving the overall experience of your event.

Relative Sizing

Facilitate conversation and gain shared alignment on sizing of complexity and value

Retrospectives

Reflect, inspect and adapt ways of working to drive continuous team improvement

Risk Management

Identify potential problems that might occur during the course of your project and identify ways of avoiding them. Risks, which are occurring, will become issues.

Risk Radar

Keep risks in view for effective monitoring and control

Rose Chart

Identify knowledge gaps and create learning focus areas for team members

Rose, Thorn, Bud

Understand what's working, what's not, and areas of opportunity

SMART Goals

Setting SMART objectives ensure that your goals hit 5 key criteria, to ensure progress.

SWOT Analysis

Review business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Scrum

A delivery framework for deliver value early and often

Security checklist

Shift left security by running through a checklist during code review.

Service Blueprint

A business process diagram analyzed from the people perspective.

Service Level Indicators

Quantify the quality of your service

Showcase

An event to demonstrate and show the outputs and outcomes of a team's work over a recent time period

Silent Brainstorming / Brainwriting

Generate greater diversity of ideas and foster inclusivity

Social Contract

Build a constructive, fun team culture

Spaghetti Wall

An always-open space for collaborating on new problems and ideas

Split Testing - A/B Testing

Quantitative testing of two alternative designs to learn which better leads to a specific goal

Split Testing - Multivari Testing

Quantitatively test how multiple factors influence the success of a design

Stacey Matrix

Decide on a management approach by evaluating the level of agreement and certainty.

Stakeholder Map

Create a stakeholders map to build a communication plan

Stakeholder Mapping (Mobius Outcome Delivery)

Who is impacted and has a stake in the game?

Stakeholder RACI Map

Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in a project or initiative, ensuring alignment, transparency, and efficiency in decision-making.

Stakeholders Interview

Help identify concrete objectives, targets and main priority areas

Start At The End

Describe what success looks like and use this to define the goal of effort

Start With Why

Connect to your purpose

Stop the World Event

Empower team members to stop everything when they feel engagement is off course

Story Kick-offs

The act of explaining a story to the pair of developers right before they pick it up.

Story RePointing

Improve Story Pointing over time

Storytelling Framework

Morph ideas into impactful, emotive stories to resonate with your audience.

Strategic Pre-Mortem

Identify risks and failure points *before* you begin.

System Diagram

A method for describing a system at the highest level possible

Systemic Konsensing

How to find minimal viable decisions in a group

T2R2 - Talk, type, read, review!

Help everyone be heard, understood, and move to act.

Target Outcomes

Capture and articulate the goals and outcomes a team are striving to deliver

Team Canvas

Achieve better team alignment, collaboration, and productivity.

Team Empowerment Agreement

Accelerate confident decision-making and reduce bottlenecks by clarifying boundaries to foster autonomy, trust, and accountability.

Team Identity

Converting groups of individuals into high performing teams

Team Sentiment

Track the mood of a team with visible feedback

Team Story

Tracing the evolution of your teams.

Team Success Beacon

Gather team sentiment and observations to incite team discussions

Team Workspaces

How to create the right workspace(s) for high-performing teams

Technical Debt

The cost of reworking quickly implemented solutions

Test Automation

Shortening the feedback loop and increasing the quality of code.

Test Driven Development

Improving your software in short development cycles.

The Art Gallery

A collection of doodles that are captured from the team

The Big Picture

A simple workshop for getting shared understanding in a complex space

The Matrix of Principles

A reflection tool to capture how stakeholders understand Deming's 14 Management Principles.

The Organum

Structuring project knowledge to save time and reduce cognitive overload.

The RICE Scoring Model

The RICE Scoring Model is used for prioritizing projects or decisions.

The Theory of Constraints

“Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion.”

Threat Modeling

A practice to learn What Could Go Wrong and What Are We Going To Do About It

Tormenta de eventos

Un método rápido e interactivo de descubrir los procesos de negocio.

Tribute Wall

Share and spread feedback to the whole team.

UI Design Workshop

Quickly sketch rough ideas for the user interface.

Ubiquitous Language

Unambigulously define the term and concepts of a business domain.

Unicorn, Skunk, Rat (USR)

Ensure your meeting/workshop stays on track

Usability Testing

Observe and learn from real users

User Persona

Develop detailed profiles of target users to inform and guide product design and development.

User Story Mapping & Value Slicing

Create lightweight release plans by slicing value out of collections of features

V2MOMs (Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, & Measures)

Enable communication of strategy, especially when you need strong top-down alignment.

Value Stream Mapping

Visual Representation of how Value flows through your system and identify metrics to inform improvement decisions.

Virtual Obeya Design Studio

The Virtual Obeya Design Studio enables organizations to create a centralized digital hub ("Obeya") that aggregates and radiates critical information across teams. Its goal is to facilitate timely, fact-based decision-making, strategic alignment, and transparency in remote/hybrid work environments by visualizing strategy, work, performance, and cultural health.