InfoQ Homepage Communication Content on InfoQ
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Shifting to Asynchronous Communication in Software Teams
As some companies begin to go back to the office and embrace hybrid working, they are at risk of alienating those who wish to remain remote, which is looking to be a considerable number of workers in our industry. James Stanier suggests using more asynchronous means of communication and spending more time writing to each other rather than speaking in meetings.
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How to Work Asynchronously as a Remote-First SRE
The core practices for remote work at Netlify are prioritising asynchronous communication, being intentional about our remote community building, and encouraging colleagues to protect their work-life balance. Sustainable remote work starts with sustainable working hours, which includes making yourself “almost” unreachable with clear boundaries and protocols for out of hours contact.
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Adapting a Zero Bug Policy to Solve Bugs
Applying a zero bug policy made it easier to prioritize bugs and increased team visibility and responsiveness towards bugs. As it’s a radical change, you will need to adapt it to your context regarding decision-making and time to fix a bug.
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Dealing with Cognitive Biases in Software Development
Cognitive biases help us to think faster, but they also make us less rational than we think we are. Being able to recognize and overcome biases can prevent problems and increase the performance of software teams.
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Assessing Remote Employee Experiences for Hybrid-Remote Work-Settings
Employers and employees have begun to prepare for their return to the office. One of the options is a hybrid-remote work setting which aims to support individual preferences when it comes to where, when, and how to work. According to Kaleem Clarkson, assessing your remote employee experience can help to make decisions on workplace flexibility policies.
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Distributed DevOps Teams: Supporting Digitally Connected Teams
To establish a digital connection within a globally distributed team, an organization provided the team members with both collaboration tools and supplied an extra monitor with a visualization board. Collaboration using the online chat and white board initially posed challenges, as the board was tweaked towards the teams’ needs.
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How to Improve Your Team's Communication and Psychological Safety
Mapping your team’s typical communication style can help improve communication and psychological safety, reduce friction within a team, and make conflict more productive. When we understand how we communicate and how we like to be communicated with, we not only have a better understanding of ourselves, but also of others, and this can play to our and their strengths accordingly.
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The Impact of Radical Uncertainty on People
Humans look for certainty as that makes them feel safe. Suddenly becoming an entirely distributed team due to the pandemic disrupted people. According to Kara Langford, radical uncertainty can cause people to believe they are in danger and lead to health issues. People will respond differently; uncertainty has also shown to lead to fresh ideas, innovations, and social good.
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Developing Testing Skills outside of Working Hours
Gamifying your way of testing, joining online testing communities of practice, and virtual traveling; these are examples of activities you can do outside of working hours that can make you a better tester. You can practice continuous learning with other testers in the world, and then implement things you learned at your workplace and share them with your team to improve ways of testing.
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Becoming Personally Agile for Mental Health
Feeling the need to be constantly producing high-quality deliverables with a high sense of perfection can lead to stress and can cause burnout. You have to first accept that you have a problem to find your way out of burnout. Applying agile on a personal level can help you to achieve high goals while reducing stress and lowering the chance of getting burnout.
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QCon Plus: Summary of the Non-Technical Skills for Technical Folks Track
Qcon Plus ran in November 2020. Once of the tracks focused on Non-Technical Skills for Technical Folks. Hosted by Randy Shoup of eBay, the track concentrated on some of the important people skills needed for effective communication and collaboration in and outside teams.
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Articulating Leadership through Nemawashi and Collaborative Boards
High performance teams don’t need to be managed, but led. Collaborative boards is where leadership and teams meet to align direction and initiatives. Nemawashi can be used to separate conversations from meetings. Fernando Guigou spoke about articulating leadership using an approach that he calls ZenSum at Agile Tour London 2020.
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Applying a Zero-Bug Policy at Redgate
A zero-bug policy is a simple yet effective bug management system that can help you avoid being buried deep in months or sometimes even years-old bugs. Any bugs you agree are serious enough for you to fix, you fix right away, and any other bug will not be fixed and closed. Tom Walsh spoke about how Redgate Software applied the zero-bug policy at Lean Agile Exchange 2020.
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Microsoft Launches a New Communication Platform with Azure Communication Services
During its annual Ignite Conference, Microsoft announced Azure Communication Services (ACS), a fully-managed communication platform. The offering is currently in public preview.
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Learnings from a Project That Went from Heaven to Hell
Maja Selmer Megard, project leader and department manager at Kantega, shares her experience from a project that at first sight seemed to be a perfect fit in all regards, but ended up as the most exhausting, conflict-ridden project she has been in.