InfoQ Homepage Culture Content on InfoQ
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How Resilience Can Help to Get Better at Resolving Incidents
Applying resilience throughout the incident lifecycle by taking a holistic look at the sociotechnical system can help to turn incidents into learning opportunities. Resilience can help folks get better at resolving incidents and improve collaboration. It can also give organizations time to realize their plans.
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Embracing Complexity by Asking Questions, Listening, and Building a Shared Understanding
When dealing with an environment that feels complex, people commonly look for ways to reduce variability and increase control for dealing with complexity. An alternative approach is to embrace complexity by acknowledging that it exists, asking questions and listening, and constructing a shared understanding based on different perspectives. This lets us improve how we adapt on an ongoing basis.
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How Big Tech Lost Its Way - Regulation and Freedom
Technology plays an ever increasing part in our lives, yet big tech seems to be running out of control, showing behavior that is at odds with its principles. Regulation is starting to develop, but laws are rarely applied. The leaders of big tech companies should realise their job is culture. At QCon London 2023, Andy Walker gave a talk about how big tech lost its way.
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Avoid Being an "Ivory Tower" Architect: the Relationship between Architects and Their Organisation
In a recently published episode of Armchair Architects, the speakers discussed the relationship between software architects and the rest of the organisation. They detail how a successful architect can impact others by switching between going into the trenches and zooming into a tree and then being able to zoom out and estimate if that tree still fits into the forest.
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Google 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report Finds Strong Culture Predictive of Strong Performance
Google has released their findings from the 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report. This year's report focused on security with a specific emphasis on the software supply chain. The report found a broad adoption of the inspected practices with organizations that have a high-trust, low-blame culture leading the way in both security and operational practices.
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Building an Effective Platform by Focusing on End-to-End Workflows
Platform engineering teams need to focus on building end-to-end workflows versus individual tools according to Naphat Sanguansin, CTO at Prodvana. A focus on workflows will help to abstract away the complexities of running services and allow for application engineers to focus on their product.
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Trust-Driven Development: Building Cognitive and Emotional Pillars
Trust-driven development uses authenticity to build a safe environment for people to operate. To build trust we need to focus on two main pillars of trust – cognitive and emotional. We need to be brave, have courage, and give people access to our authentic selves.
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Scaling Software Architecture via Conversations: the Advice Process
Andrew Harmel-Law recently published an article describing a decentralised, scalable software architecture process based on the "Advice Process". The Advice Process promotes software architecture by encouraging a series of conversations driven by an empowering, almost anarchistic, decision-making technique. It comprises one rule - anyone can make an architectural decision.
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How Organisational Culture and Psychological Safety Fosters Our Creativity
Organisations need to create the right conditions and culture for creativity to flourish so as to stay relevant, compete and thrive for the future. An addiction to burnout and fixation on productivity can stifle creativity. What’s needed is psychological safety, inclusion, experimentation, growth mindsets and allowing thinking time.
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How a Safe-to-Fail Approach Can Enable Psychological Safety in Teams
Companies can establish a culture of psychological safety among their employees, a culture in which failing is not frowned upon but rather is accepted as something that can happen to anyone. Safe-to-fail should be part of the corporate culture. A shift in the way we envision success can lead to a better understanding of where failure lies and provide courage to overcome our fears.
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Collective Learnings about Remote Working during Covid-19
The response to the pandemic showed how to make sure people are productive and included in a hybrid environment, and it's all due to the learnings we carried on from March 2020. Many organisations demonstrated how it’s possible to work in an inclusive and productive way even if people are distributed around the world.
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Remote Working Risks Increasing Toxic Cultures
In a study conducted in May 2021 of 133 US companies, 29% of the respondents said that team spirit and working relationships have suffered from working remotely, with 11% leaving or planning to leave because the company culture has become toxic. Toxic cultures result in demotivated and disengaged employees and have a significant negative impact on organizational outcomes.
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Fostering Cross-Cultural Collaboration
Building intercultural relationships are so important to success in the workplace and world today, yet many people are hesitant or unsure of how to build relationships with those who are different from themselves. The first step is to reflect on yourself and notice where and how you spend your time and resources.
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Paving the Road to Production at Coinbase: QCon Plus Q&A
As Coinbase scaled both their number of engineers and customers, they needed more projects, faster iteration, and more control over their growing infrastructure. In developing their in-house deployment tool by looking at what developers were doing and trying to help them, they created a culture of self-service.
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Creating and Nurturing an Intentional Remote Culture
Company culture isn’t built in the short term, nor can it be imposed. It’s deeply rooted in the founders’ ideologies and behaviours around work. From there, it grows and evolves organically as the company hires individuals who embrace these values, and who also bring their own identity into the mix.