InfoQ Homepage Coaching and Mentoring Content on InfoQ
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Are You a Software Architect?
The line between development and architecture is tricky. Some say it's fake, that architecture is an extension of the design process undertaken by developers; others say it's a chasm that can only be crossed by lofty developers who believe you must abstract your abstractions and not worry about implementation details. There's a balance in the middle, but how do you move from one to the other?
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Tips from a Top Sports Team Coach
In team sport, as in software development, the team factor is crucial for success. In fact, team sport shows many inspiring parallels to software development. This article outlines 9 essential principles top-coach Marc Lammers discovered while building the world’s best field hockey team, and maps them to software development practices
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The Agile Coach, from A to Z
Agile approaches introduce a new leadership role, the "Agile Coach," which is not familiar from traditional methodologies. What's so important about this role? Is it just a new name for an old role? Why does Monster.com list 54 positions with this title? Patrick Kua of ThoughtWorks lists 26 useful answers to this question, in the form of an A-to-Z primer.
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Better Best Practices
Organizations often introduce Best Practices as part of a change program or quality initiative. These can take a number of forms, from cheat sheets to full-blown consultant-led methodologies, complete with the requisite auditing and accreditation. In this article, Dan North shows how best practices can not only fail to help, but even have a severe negative impact on your top performers.
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Being Agile Without Going Overboard
Agile Software Development is gaining popularity. But, what does it mean to be agile? Is it using unit testing, continuous integration, following XP, Scrum? In this article Venkat Subramaniam discusses how to incrementally introduce agility into a project which is in trouble and not currently agile.