InfoQ Homepage Collaboration Content on InfoQ
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Variations on New Normal for Workplaces
Over the last year office work has shifted to almost completely remote, and as vaccination programs roll out around the world it is shifting again. There is a lot of speculation around what the new normal will look like. Employee well-being, flexibility in working arrangements, availability creep, virtual and augmented reality are all factors impacting what work could look like going forward.
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The Importance of Psychological Safety for Agile Transformations in Africa
The absence of psychological safety in the world of work limits the agile transformation journeys of organisations in Africa. Psychological safety is an enabler, not an act of weakness. Organisations that do not understand or foster it might find it difficult to survive in these VUCA times.
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Advice on Overcoming Zoom Fatigue
Recent studies by Stanford and Microsoft point to the reality of “Zoom Fatigue” - the physiological and psychological tiredness caused by back to back virtual meetings. Both studies explore reasons for the tiredness and present advice on reducing the impact.
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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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Virtualizing Design Sprint and UX Workshops
Design sprint and UX workshops can be done virtually using a combination of remote whiteboards and communication platforms. It brings advantages like being able to invite international experts, having remote participants attend, less travelling, smaller carbon footprint, and lower costs.
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Manuel Pais on Team Topologies during COVID-19
Manuel Pais, co-author of Team Topologies, recently spoke alongside leaders of Capra Consulting who have used the topologies to move from hierarchical structures to empowered teams. We report on the journey and speak to Pais about team topologies in the context of COVID-19.
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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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Meetings in a Time of Separation
Having many people in virtual meetings can lead to people who only partly attend and become disengaged. We should question who should be attending the meeting and make information from the meeting available for those who decide not to attend to decrease meeting FOMO.
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Maintaining Psychological Safety under Pressure
When leaders are under pressure they can fall into dark side behaviours that can cause deep and lasting harm to organisation culture and psychological safety. Leaders need to be very conscious about deliberately managing their reactions and responses to pressure situations in order to avoid allowing what are often character strengths to be overused and potentially become toxic.
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Experiences from a Testing Tour of Pairing and Learning
Being a solo tester on a team, Parveen Khan decided to do a testing tour where she paired remotely with testers and developers to explore topics. It became a testing journey of learning where she explored testing topics like performance testing, AI and ML, observability, and Sketchnoting. In doing these sessions she also experienced how pairing and sharing can help to develop oneself.
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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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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.
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Value vs Time: an Agile Contract Model
An agile contract model can help us to focus on the value delivered to the customer. It allows for rewarding teams and people, and can drive continuous improvement towards common goals. InfoQ interviewed Andrea Zomer, CEO at Zupit, about their experiences with an agile contract model.
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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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Chaos Conf Q&A: Adrian Cockcroft & Yury Niño Roa
In preparation for ChaosConf 2020, InfoQ sat down with Adrian Cockcroft and Yury Niño Roa to explore topics of interest in the chaos engineering community. Key takeaways included: there are clear benefits to running “game days” to develop psychological safety, and the future of chaos engineering points toward incorporating security and scaling up experiments to test larger failure modes.