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  • How Playing Games Enables Engaging Ways of Learning Agility

    Games can help us create a collaborative, joyful, and fun experience in which we play to solve complex problems. According to Jakub Perlak, people can play games that have a meaningful purpose, and have fun in doing so. Games create space for intentional cognitive activity which helps us when learning something new and adapting to changes that are important for agility.

  • How Team Members Learn From Each Other in Agile Teams

    When adopting agile teams can use (external) coaches and mentors. But teams can also develop themselves by having team members mentoring and coaching each other. Team members can learn skills and abilities from other team members in multidisciplinary teams, enabling the team to grow as a whole and become self-organized.

  • Learning from Failures with The Lean Startup

    The lean startup is about fast delivery of desired products to customers, and increasing your understanding about the needs of customers. With the lean startup, people can learn faster from failures and become better innovators. There are teachers that use a lean startup based approach in education, which helps their students to learn faster.

  • New Avenues for Operations Engineering Education

    Technology education enthusiasts got together to have a panel discussion on hangops last month about creating new opportunities for operations engineering education. They acknowledge that it is harder than ever to find qualified individuals for today's operation engineering jobs and discussed ways to solve that problem.

  • How to Pay the Author: Flattr Micropayment Service

    Earlier this year the micropayment service flattr (a wordplay of flatrate and flatter) went live. The principle is simple but could change the way in which we reward quality content on the net. Flattr was initiated by one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, who also presented it at social media conferences like re:publica.

  • Teaching Games - Fun or Serious Business?

    Michael McCullough and Don McGreal, creators of the Tasty Cupcakes teaching games website, have published an article on "Fun Driven Development." The economic downturn hasn't squeezed these games out of our training programs - in fact, they've become a staple where Agilists gather to exchange ideas. Here's a little history and some starting points for using games with your teams.

  • Looking Inward To Stop An Agile "Decline And Fall"

    Discussions about agile's "decline and fall" have been a somewhat recurring theme here on the AgileQ, and in the community in general, centering around sentiments that people aren't adopting agile effectively, that they're doing it wrong and screwing it up. Kevin Schlabach poses the idea that the agile community itself, by not growing new leaders, has a hand in causing this.

  • Scrum Club: Agile Philanthropy With an Edge

    The first rule of Scrum Club is... At work they are product managers, CTOs, entrepreneurs, designers, and coders. At Scrum Club they are helping each other learn about agile development, by doing agile development, while benefiting non-profit organizations. It helps that they have a Fight Club inspired video. ...and if this is your first time at Scrum Club, you have to Scrum!

  • Rebooting Computing Summit 2009: Computing is Not Dead

    Rebooting Computing Summit 2009 concluded recently and had over 250 people representing industry, practitioners, and academia convene to discuss how to 'reboot' the computer science field, since reports show that the innovation rate in our field has been declining and that enrollments in our degree programs have dropped 50% since 2001.

  • Bowling Green Students Build Agile Software for Non-Profit Clients

    In the first program of its kind, students in Bowling Green State University's Agile Software Factory program learn about agile development by building real software for local community service organizations. Over the course of a 16 week semester, students go from initial client meeting to delivery of a working system. The program is supported through a partnership with the Agile Alliance.

  • Agile Games for Learning

    At Agile 2008, Don McGreal and Michael McCullough ran a session that showed how to use games and exercises to help improve our understanding of Agile principles and practices. After the conference they created the Tasty Cupcakes as a repository for all Agile games.

  • Card Game Teaches Distributed Project Communication Lessons

    Charles Suscheck presented how he uses a variation of the card game Rummy to teach the importance of communication, planning, and collaboration on projects at Agile2008. The game explores the effects of various levels of distribution on a team, as well as the impact of adding or removing experts on the team during a project.

  • RubyLearning.com to Relaunch Free Online Lessons

    After achieving popularity last summer, Satish Talim at <a href="http://www.rubylearning.com/" target="_new">RubyLearning</a> is doing it again with his free online course. It started as a way for him to pick up the language, and after the community picked up on it, over 100 people joined him. He hopes to do better this time.

  • Conferences - Does Size Matter?

    Agile2006 welcomed over 1100 participants from 29 countries, and offered over 200 different presentations. The exhilaration of a large crowd is undisputable, but now that it's over, it's important to look at the feedback in preparation for next year. Ron Jeffries has made an open invitation for feedback on his blog. Others are planning complementary, smaller events. What's the consensus?

  • How Should We Teach Design Patterns?

    Design patterns are a key to productive "refactoring", an Agile practice that keeps applications stable and maintainable, and a central aspect of Agile methodologies like XP. The 5th "Killer Examples" for Design Patterns and Objects workshop will take place at OOPSLA2006 in October, and will be looking at how to teach design patterns - apparently existing materials can be challenging for novices.

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