Direction
Joy of Agility by Joshua Kerievsky
It took us several meetings spread across several days to draft our vision (our desired future state), our mission (how we would achieve our vision), objectives (how we'd measure the success of our work), our community (who would be involved int he work), and our working agreements (how we would work together harmoniously). This work allowed us to get aligned and focused on a shared purpose. [35]
The Staff Engineer's Path by Tanya Reilly
Understand who's sponsoring this project and what they'll want you to do for them... Get some time with them. Go in prepared with a clear (ideally, written) description of what you think they're hoping to achieve from the project and what success looks like. Ask if they agree. If they don't... write down what they're telling what they're telling you and double-check that you got it right. [40]