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  • High-performance Teams – Avoiding Teamicide

    High-performance teams constitute a mere 2% of the workforce, but Agile processes appear to stimulate the formation of these types of teams. This article discusses Steve Denning's perspective on how such teams can be nurtured in the workplace; it also looks at a recent talk by Ominlab Media's Stefan Gillard on how to select and employ for the formation of high-performance teams.

  • Handling Your Team's "Rotten Apple"

    Recently there has been an active discussion in the Scrum Development Yahoo Group about handling an "under-performing" team member. In the 130+ response thread, "Rotten apple in Scrum team", talk ranged from advice for the primary question, to talk of team morale and who manages it, to the classic debate of measuring individuals, to distinguishing whether a team is really a "team", and more.

  • Do Specialists Outperform Generalists on an Agile Team?

    An Agile team is mostly a cross functional team comprising of generalists and specialists. Jurgen Appelo, challenges this concept and suggests that having just specialists on an Agile team adds more value. The post tries to correlate various view points on team composition by other members of the Agile community.

  • Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Agile compatibility

    Design in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) world involves working with the user to understand the problem and come up with a user interface – typically on paper - of the entire system before turning it over, in Big Design Upfront (BDUF) manner, to the rest of the development team to build. So how can Robert Biddle claim that HCI has home-grown practices that are very similar to those of Agile?

  • Interview: Linda Rising on Collaboration, Bonobos and the Brain

    Seasoned practitioners packed a small room at Agile2006 to hear Linda Rising's "Are Agilists the Bonobos of the Software Community?" where she shared her thoughts on the evolutionary roots of teamwork. In this InfoQ interview, Linda talked with editor Deborah Hartmann about how writing her book "Fearless Change" led her to read on the science of the human brain and the social rituals of apes.

  • Predictions: The Changing World of IT Work

    In a recent Datamation article, James Maguire noted the challenge of staying employed in an environment in which the rules are continually rewritten. He spoke with Gartner analyst Diane Morello for 5 predictions for those of us thinking about career directions over the next five years.

  • Gender Gap Continues to Increase in IT: Gartner

    A recent Gartner report on the gender gap in IT states that although many feel that women are "innately better suited than men" to navigate the new global economy, they are not choosing to enter IT - and some are leaving. Gartner predicts that by 2012, 40% of women in the IT workforce will leave traditional IT career paths.

  • IT Hiring Trend: Business Savvy Mandatory

    Ziff Davis' August surveys find that IT is growing in all sectors, leading to increased IT hiring. And though execs express a significant preference for IT professionals with a head for business over technical wizards, they anticipate these will be hard to find. Particularly in demand are professionals in project management, business-process redesign, business analysis and systems integration.

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