InfoQ Homepage Team Collaboration Content on InfoQ
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Organizing Self-organizing Teams
Rashina Hoda is a PhD researcher who has been examining how self-organization actually happens on teams. She has studied teams in New Zealand and India and identified six distinct roles that emerge when teams effectively self-organize. She spoke to InfoQ about her research, which will be published at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE2010) to be held in Cape Town in May.
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Most Effective Team Structure
Agile talks about small team sizes with the magic numbers of 7 plus minus 2. Agile also recommends whole teams. Whole team is a concept that advises for having sufficient skills within the team itself to get the job done. Thus the development team has the testing skills, database skills, user interface skills, apart from the core development skills. Is defining the team structure this easy?
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Rules for Better Retrospectives
James Carr recently published a list of five rules to help improve the effectiveness of retrospectives. The rules are based on his experiences in hundreds of retrospectives, both successful and not.
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Agile Team Spaces: Do's and Don'ts
Many of us, who are new to Agile, would believe that putting an Agile team together in a room gets the job done. A few of us would actually pay attention to what makes a room a team room which can enhance productivity and motivation. Many Agile teams have already shared their perspective on what would make an ideal team room. Here are a few recent ones.
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Five Benefits of Feature Teams
Mike Cohn and others present their case to why you should consider structuring your teams around software "features" rather than software "components".
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Social Contracts Facilitate Team Commitment
Formalised social contracts provide a structure to help reduce the fear, uncertainty and doubt associated with organisational change, and can enable an Agile transition to go more smoothly. Israel Gat provides an example of the social contract he used at BMP Software.
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Microsoft is Offering Free Teamprise Upgrades for TFS 2010
Microsoft has recently purchased Teamprise Client Suite from Teamprise, a division of SourceGear. The products will continue to be offered under a new brand name with free upgrades once the TFS 2010 version is ready.
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Tasktop Pro 1.6 Supports Task Management for C/C++ Projects and Automated Time Tracking
The latest version of Tasktop Pro, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration suite for Eclipse IDE, supports cross-repository linking, task management focus for C/C++ Projects and agile ALM tool integration. Tasktop Technologies, creators of Eclipse Mylyn and Tasktop, announced last week the release of Tasktop Pro 1.6 version. The new release also supports automated time-tracking feature.
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Git# Offers Git Access for .NET and Mono Projects
Git# is a .NET and Mono version of the popular source code management system, Git, obtained by porting JGit to C#. Other related projects are: msysgit and gitextensions.
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Need an Answer to Context Switching? Get Disturbed
Context Switching is defined as changing focus and attention from one task to the other in relatively short periods of time. It is widely considered harmful for the team member and the project that he is working on. Charles Miller mentioned a few ways of how they handle context switching at Atlassian.
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Tasktop Supports Integration with ScrumWorks Pro and ThoughtWorks Adaptive ALM Tools
Tasktop Technologies, the company behind Eclipse Mylyn Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration framework, now supports integration with Danube Technologies Scrumworks Pro and ThoughtWorks Studios Adaptive ALM software. Tasktop also released Tasktop Pro 1.5 version back in June.
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Agile Addresses "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team"
Tathagat Varma, general manager with a large provider of IT management solutions, wondered whether Agile's productivity improvements could be linked to how it improves teamwork. His article analyses Agile values and practices by mapping them against Patrick Lencioni's business fable "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team."
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ScrumMaster Interview Tips
The ScrumMaster or Iteration Manager is a crucial role on Agile teams, and selecting which organisation/team to work with is important – when considering taking on a new project it’s important to set the environment up for success. This article provides interviewing advice for ScrumMasters considering taking on a project or team.
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What is Velocity Good For?
A recent discussion on the ScrumDevelopment Yahoo! group discussed the different uses and misuses for velocity. Should velocity be used a metric for productivity? Should it be used for iteration planning? What about longer term release planning?
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Lessons Learned from the UK Agile Coaches Gathering
Recently, a number of European Agile Coaches gathered in the UK to discuss their craft and share ideas. Attendees included: Rachel Davies, Mike Sutton, David Peterson, Plamen Balkanski, Keith Braithwaite, Duncan Pierce, .... They covered a diverse range of subjects: Effective Coaching Styles, Why Do We Coach? Self Organizing Teams, and others.