Heidi Helfand - Dynamic Reteaming: The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams

Heidis wisdom will change how you think about, form, re-form, and participate in teams. Her stories, whether from the three successful startups shes guided through hypergrowth or the dozens of teams shes 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 updatedthe 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. Helfand 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. Heidis 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 development 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 fundamental book for anyone involved in the fine art of balancing team evolution with team health in the real world. The authors 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 professional 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? Isnt change the opposite of team? The established Agile paradigm 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. Thats 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 follow. 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 Heidis 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 individuals 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