BT

Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

Write for InfoQ

Topics

Choose your language

InfoQ Homepage Continuous Improvement Content on InfoQ

  • Keeping Technology Change Human

    When we are at the forefront of so much change, it's easy to forget that other people around us find change more challenging. This article is a reminder to look beyond the code and processes, to consider how tech team actions can affect our users in emotional ways. It seeks to establish a few ways of thinking to help bring others along with us when working through technology change.

  • How Journaling Puts Leadership in Action

    Have you ever wondered how keeping a journal (or even a so-called “diary”) and business-related topics go together? In this article, Cosima Laube explores how regular structured writing for the sake of reflection and learning looks, and shares her own experience with different journaling variants and techniques, as well as some science and meta-level views.

  • Increasing Developer Effectiveness by Optimizing Feedback Loops

    We can think of engineering as a series of feedback loops: simple tasks that developers do and then validate to get feedback, which might be by a colleague, a system (i.e. an automation) or an end user. Using a framework of feedback loops we have a way of measuring and prioritizing the improvements we need to do to optimize developer effectiveness.

  • Continuous Learning as a Tool for Adaptation

    The fifth and capstone article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience explores key themes with a special view on the practicality of organizational resilience. It also provides practical guidance to engineering leadership and recommendations on how to create this investment.

  • Put the Feedback back into “Demo & Feedback”

    As agilists, we know the importance of showing our work and getting feedback as early as we possibly can. That feedback guides what we do next. To get what you need to meet the desires of your stakeholders, this article looks at the demo and the feedback part of that session and provides suggestions for creating amazing demo & feedback sessions.

  • Surviving Zombie Scrum

    The book Zombie Scrum Survival Guide by Christiaan Verwijs, Johannes Schartau, and Barry Overeem aims to support teams that are stuck in Zombie Scrum. It helps them to understand why things are the way they are and provide them with experiments to get out of this state of Zombie Scrum by enabling collaboration with stakeholders, working increments, autonomy for teams, and continuous improvement.

  • Becoming an Exceptional Manager

    The book Manager in Shorts by Gal Zellermayer describes principles of management in hi-tech, focusing on people, processes, and culture. It provides tips and ideas that readers can use to develop their leadership skills and learn how to manage technical people and become an exceptional manager.

  • Leading during Times of High Uncertainty and Change

    To help teams succeed during uncertain times, leaders need to navigate different horizons; managing themselves and building strong relationships with their teams. Organisations need leadership at all levels. In order to be successful, leaders should develop skills for self-management, delegation, dealing with ambiguity, managing in all directions, systems thinking, and leading through context.

  • Improving Organizational Agility with Self-Management

    This article presents "self-management" as a possibility to natively support agility to plant seeds and let both institutions and people thrive and benefit from it. Agility may go hand-in-hand with self-management as a way to shift mindsets and open a conversation to really find new ways of working in organizations.

  • Adaptive Frontline Incident Response: Human-Centered Incident Management

    The third article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience zeros in on the sources that comprise most of your company’s adaptive resources: your frontline responders. In this article, we draw on our experiences as incident commanders with Twilio to share our reflections on what it means to cultivate resilient people.

  • Q&A on the Book The Rise of the Agile Leader

    The book The Rise of the Agile Leader by Chuck Mollor is a blueprint for leaders navigating change in the pursuit of success. Mollor shares his story of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-development, while demonstrating a leadership paradigm, a roadmap of what makes a great leader, and what organizations can do to develop great leaders.

  • Q&A on the Book Retrospectives Antipatterns

    Using the familiar “patterns” approach, the book Retrospectives Antipatterns by Aino Vonge Corry describes unfortunate situations that can sometimes happen in retrospectives. For each situation, described as an antipattern, it also provides solutions for dealing with the situation; this can be a way to solve the problem directly or avoid similar problems in future retrospectives.

BT