InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Open Office Layouts Bad for Productivity and Memory
A recent BBC article revived the discussion about the "best" office layout for productive knowledge work - how spaces impact culture, productivity and collaboration.
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Organizing over Organization
In the coming years we will see less organizations, but not less organizing. Organizing is a daily activity to get things done, but we don't necessarily need organizations to do things. When individuals are subordinate to the organization, it's an inhibitor for adopting modern management approaches.
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Microsoft Makes Cloud-Based Biological Research Tool Open Source
Bio Model Analyzer, a Microsoft cloud-based tool that biologists can use to model cell interactions and communications, is now available as open-source on GitHub. It is used to create computer models that can compare the processes within healthy and diseased cells. Scientists can see the interactions between millions of genes and proteins, speeding up research and treatment of diseases.
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Humility is a Positive Trait
Validating the premise of Jim Collins' description of "Level 5 Leadership," a study described in the Washington Post shows how humility is a positive trait in many aspects of our lives, including leadership.
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Courage to Become Agile
Being brave is about doing what is necessary, even when you are afraid. The single most important thing in agile is to inspect and dare to change things which aren't working. You can start with small experiments to find solutions, and if it turns they do not work, then you can stop them.
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Overcoming Self-Imposed Limitations
People can feel limited when challenged, which slows them down or keeps them from trying. It can be a real problem, but their fear might actually be in their imagination. Sometimes the only thing that's holding you back is yourself. Survival rules can hinder us- sometimes you have to break them.
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The Employee Experience: How to Make People Want to Show Up at Work
Jacob Morgan, a keynote speaker, best-selling author and the co-founder of The Future of Work Community, a global innovation council of the world’s most forward thinking organizations exploring the new world of work, gave a webinar along with Cisco to discuss how organizations should behave to create remarkable employee experiences, the ones that make people want to show up at work.
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Google: Managers Matter after All
Based on internal data, Google researchers have come up with 8 traits that great managers have, providing guidance and tools to other organizations to find out if managers matter to them and how to train their managers.
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Practical Tips for Automated Acceptance Tests
Testing techniques like Equivalence Partitioning, Boundary Value Analysis, and Risk-based Testing can help you decide what to test and when to automate a test. InfoQ spoke with Adrian Bolboacă about different types of tests, writing sufficient and good acceptance tests, criteria to decide to automate a test, and how to apply test automation to create executable specifications.
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Approval Testing with TextTest
Approval testing is a test technique which compares the current output of your code with an 'approved' version. The approved version is created by initially examining the test output and approving the result. You can revisit the approved version and easily update it when the requirements change. Approval testing is supported by TextTest, an open source tool for text-based functional testing.
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Eric J. McNulty : Your People’s Brains Need Face Time
In a recent Strategy and Business article, leadership author Eric J. McNulty wrote about why distributed teams need to get together on a regular basis in order to be most effective. He cites research into distributed teams which shows that the value of face-to-face sessions far exceeds the cost of bringing people together.
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Dead Code Must Be Removed
Dead code needs to be found and removed; leaving dead code in is an obstacle to programmer understanding and action, and there's the risk that the code is awakened which can cause significant problems. Deleting dead code is not a technical problem; it is a problem of mindset and culture.
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Applying the Teal Paradigm
Applying the teal paradigm helps organizations increase team members' engagement and allows teams to grow. Teal oriented organizations think of themselves as "living organisms"; they are human centric and liberating towards their employees, and look for the resourcefulness in humans rather than looking at humans as resources.
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The Improvisor's Code and QConSF
Through improv games, Ted DesMaisons and Lisa Rowland shared three hacks for building a better life - embracing failure, saying "yes," and sharing control.
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Testing Challenges and Essential Skills for Testers
Complex AI systems with non-deterministic outcomes pose challenges for testers and programmers. Such systems will increasingly become normal in high-impact, high-risk applications, argues Fiona Charles; testers should increase their capacity for thinking and learning and develop a number of personal strengths such as courage and good judgement.