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Culture & Methods

Group Coaching - Extending Growth Opportunity beyond Individual Coaching

This article provides an introduction to group coaching and explains how it is different from individual coaching. It sheds light on the benefits of using group coaching, skills that coaches would need and the challenges they would face, with an example scenario using one of the group coaching techniques, and describes the context in which such a technique can be used.

Nafees Butt
on Dec 26, 2022
Culture & Methods

Connecting Goals to Daily Teamwork

While we all believe that goal setting is important, it’s work that often doesn’t feel quite urgent enough to be included in our daily routine. It is critical to team success for managers to implement a regular cadence that connects daily work more directly to high-level goals, removing administrative roadblocks while helping teammates focus on what matters most.

Dan Pupius
on May 16, 2022
Culture & Methods

Dynamic Value Stream Mapping to Help Increase Developer Productivity

We explore the value stream optimization technique that has proven useful across a number of industries yet is still emerging in the software field. Explore a number of dynamic value stream map practical cases, and see the industry differences in value stream usage between Lean and Agile.

Pavel Azaletskiy
on Apr 21, 2022
Culture & Methods

How Psychological Safety at Work Creates Effective Software Tech Teams That Learn and Grow

This article provides the foundations of psychological safety and shows how it has been applied for team effectiveness. It explores how psychological safety supports learning and improvement and how we can foster a psychologically safe culture in tech teams.

Ben Linders
on Apr 12, 2022
Architecture & Design

Low-Code Tools Optimize Engineering Time for Internal Applications

Internal tools are critical pieces of software, often custom-built, and requiring significant developer bandwidth. Low-code platforms can optimize developer productivity, facilitate collaboration, and allow less technical employees to be more active in the development process.

Nikhil Nandagopal
on Mar 11, 2022
Culture & Methods

Five Tips on Managing a Remote-First Development Team

Most software development teams have gone remote during the pandemic - and may stay remote even after the lockdowns. Managing remote-first teams is a challenge. Knowing how to do it right can make or break the experience for everyone. Here are five things you can do to succeed as an engineering manager.

Marcelo Wiermann
on Mar 08, 2022
Culture & Methods

Superior Employee Engagement through Radical Team Autonomy

Radically collaborative organizations have recently doubled in number. Their economic success is due to four cultural imperatives: team autonomy, managerial devolution, deficiency-need gratification, and candid vulnerability. Teams within radically collaborative organizations exhibit six dimensions of autonomy: who, what, when, where, how, and role.

Matt K. Parker
on Mar 04, 2022
Culture & Methods

Goal-Driven Kanban: Improving Performance and Motivating Teams

Goal-Driven Kanban enables teams to choose from and focus on challenging goals along the road. Teams are free to choose their pace and can take a break whenever necessary. They can set a voluntary deadline for the goal chosen together with proper time allocation. Naturally, while pursuing the goal, teams avoid distractions, celebrate achievements, and retrospect frequently.

Anastasia Galeeva Mikhail Serebrennikov
on Feb 15, 2022
Culture & Methods

Better Metrics for Building High Performance Teams

There is no agreed way to build and measure high performing engineering teams, let alone to track the success of software engineers. This article explores ways to support individuals and teams right from onboarding and identifies useful metrics which can help make performance factors visible and actionable. Developer onboarding, dynamic documentation, and asynchronous communication are key.

Kristen Buchanan
on Feb 01, 2022 2
Culture & Methods

Measure Outcomes, Not Outputs: Software Development in Today’s Remote Work World

Today’s remote work world calls for a closer look at how to measure software developer productivity. Currently, there is no standard metric and widely used methods are flawed. The author describes how they successfully lead 500+ remote software developers by measuring outcomes, rather than outputs in order to produce the ideal balance between speed and quality code development.

Manjusha Madabushi
on Dec 17, 2021
Culture & Methods

Lessons Learned from Self-Selection Reteaming at Redgate

Redgate Software runs a yearly deliberate reteaming process across engineering to alter how they invest the efforts of teams and encourage people to move towards the work they find most engaging. Self-selection reteaming is an effective and empowering method of aligning with company goals. It normalized the idea of people moving between teams for personal development and renewed sense of purpose.

Chris Smith
on Nov 29, 2021
Culture & Methods

Promoting Creativity in Software Development with the Kaizen Method

As employers struggle to hire and retain qualified talent in high-tech, SenecaGlobal is using the Kaizen method of continuous improvements by implementing small, positive changes to its culture encouraging innovation and recognition among employees. When applied to software development, Kaizen aims to produce zero-defect code and/or work(flow) processes that exceed client satisfaction metrics.

Sarma Manthravadi
on Oct 22, 2021