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5 Configuration Management Best Practices

There has been a lot of conversation going on around the configuration of applications, and how to manage it. This article explores things people can do from within their code to make their lives, and the lives of anyone else who has to administer or maintain their application, easier. These patterns have been used a number of times on ThoughtWorks projects, and they have proven their worth.

Chris Read
on Jun 03, 2010
Agile Teamwork: The Leadership - Self-management Dilemma

Self-managed teams are unstable and are successful when the ‘Leadership – Self-Management’ dilemma is understood and dealt with. Too much central control destroys agility, inhibits creativity and resists change. Too much self-management leads to chaos and anarchy and destroys a team. A successful Agile Team operates as far along self-management as it can, without tipping over into chaos.

Rowan McCann
on Jan 05, 2010
How Product Management Must Change to Enable the Agile Enterprise

When development teams adopt agile, product management is often caught off guard by the amount of work added to their already overflowing plate. Agile calls for new skills, and traditional staffing models do not typically accommodate the new product owner role. Given that most product managers are overworked, how can they manage these new activities to derive more value?

Catherine Connor
on Nov 30, 2009
The Elephant in the Room: Using Brain Science to Enhance Working Relationships

The new brain science (social neuroscience, positive psychology, and imaging techniques) give us tools for understanding and enhancing the ability of men and women to work together. Companies like Deloitte & Touche and IBM have seen financial results including increased retention of women by training their managers to use gender intelligence.

Sharon Buckmaster Diana Larsen
on Oct 29, 2009
The Role of Project Managers in Agile

Agile, as per books does not talk of role of manager but talks of a coach/facilitator. This article first explains the role of project manager in general in any industry and then tries to map it with the role of coach/facilitator in Agile. During this discussion, the article also tries to widen the scope of being a coach/facilitator.

Vinay Aggarwal
on Sep 02, 2009
Collaborative Leadership and Collaborative Management

What is the role of a leader in today’s dynamic environments? Does traditional management provide value in a market that requires agility and adaptability? In this article, we propose a leadership and management framework that fits well with the current need for innovation and distributed decision-making.

Chris Matts Niel Nickolaisen Pollyanna Pixton
on Aug 05, 2009
The Economics of Service Orientation

This article explores the structural economic changes brought up by service orientation. Most IT organizations today are under enormous financial pressure trying to keep rising costs and flat budgets in synch. The restructuring brought about by the concept of services and reuse at the service level promises long lasting relief from the cost treadmill.

Parviz Peiravi Enrique Castro-Leon Mark Chang Jackson He
on May 16, 2009
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

Urs Peter
on Aug 20, 2008
Using Numbers to Communicate - in the Spirit of Agile

It's an old story. Techies cave in to the business guys because they don't know how to push back. The problem? Developers use numbers primarily for computation, but the business uses numbers to make decisions. In this story the "Spirit of Agile" encourages a developer to turn non-computational problems and issues into number language.

Barbara Chauvin Linda Rising
on Jun 13, 2008
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.

Patrick Kua
on May 22, 2008
Help Your Teams Trade Cubicles for Communication Skills

The Agile “self organising team” paradigm demands new skills of team members – including the people skills for which they may once have depended upon their Project Managers. Far from being redundant, management can now play an important role in helping teams learn new ways to communicate and collaborate. This article proposes some strategies for imparting new skills and suggests some resources.

Deborah Hartmann Preuss
on Mar 24, 2008
The "Consulting" Contract

Coach Michael Spayd tells us that both contractors and permanent employees can play a "consultant" role, and should think about developing consulting contracts or "designed partnerships" with their clients - not about the exchange of money, but to help create stellar results for the client while working in a manner that adheres to their own values and preferences.

Michael K. Spayd
on Dec 30, 2007

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