A Fast Boot is an event that gathers the members of a team or group in one physical location to work together and bond in order to accelerate the formation of the team or group so that they reach maximum productivity as early as possible.
Right now, the fast boot is intended for new teams or for teams with a majority of new members who need to build their culture of shipping work. If your team fits this description, you can propose holding a Fast Boot to reduce ramp up time and establish and strengthen relationships between team members.
First raise the idea with your manager to determine if there’s a good case for a Fast Boot. Ultimately, the executive team will approve these on a case by case basis.
Because fast boots ultimately require a budget and approval, fast boots will be limited by both factors. As of June 12, 2019 Engineering is limited to one fast boot for FY20. As such, requests for fast boots need to be submitted by July 31, 2019 and will be prioritized. Approval will occur in by August 15, 2019. If successful, more fast boots can be planned for the FY21 budget.
When building the case for your Fast Boot, you should determine what metrics you will use to measure success. For example, after the Fast Boot you may expect your engineering team's throughput to increase or you may expect your support teams mean time to ticket resolution to decrease. You may also want to measure the sentiment of the team members after the Fast Boot with followup surveys.
During the Fast Boot the priority is building a culture of shipping work. Ideally the group can work together to ship one large, high-impact item to production. Failing that it could be a backlog of smaller items. Secondarily you should record and livestream videos that give people insight into what your team is working on. Kickoff meetings, working sessions, and demos are all great candidates for being livestreamed.
