InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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Breaking the Taboo – What I Learned from Talking about Mental Health in the Workplace
Mental illness is a topic that does not get discussed openly very often. Many people concerned hide their own history for fear of being stigmatized, especially in the workplace. This is a story about how speaking openly about mental illness, even with your boss and co-workers, can help yourself and others. The author shares with you what she has learned from breaking the taboo.
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Learning from Incidents
Jessica DeVita (Netflix) and Nick Stenning (Microsoft) have been working on improving how software teams learn from incidents in production. In this article, they share some of what they’ve learned from the research community in this area, and offer some advice on the practical application of this work.
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Q&A on the Book The Rise of the Agile Leader
The book The Rise of the Agile Leader by Chuck Mollor is a blueprint for leaders navigating change in the pursuit of success. Mollor shares his story of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-development, while demonstrating a leadership paradigm, a roadmap of what makes a great leader, and what organizations can do to develop great leaders.
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Q&A on the Book Responsive Agile Coaching
Niall McShane has written the book Responsive Agile Coaching, aimed at people who are coaching individuals, teams and organisations in new ways of working to help guide others in adapting to changing circumstances and responding to new demands. He presents a model for coaching based on knowing when to tell clients the answer versus when to guide them to find the answer for themselves.
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Meeting the Challenges of Disrupted Operations: Sustained Adaptability for Organizational Resilience
The first article in a series on how software companies adapted and continue to adapt to enhance their resilience starts by laying a foundation for thinking about organizational resilience. It looks at what organizations can do structurally during surprising and disruptive events to establish conditions that help engineering teams adapt in practice and in real time as disruptive events occur.
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Q&A on the Book Retrospectives Antipatterns
Using the familiar “patterns” approach, the book Retrospectives Antipatterns by Aino Vonge Corry describes unfortunate situations that can sometimes happen in retrospectives. For each situation, described as an antipattern, it also provides solutions for dealing with the situation; this can be a way to solve the problem directly or avoid similar problems in future retrospectives.
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Changes in the 2020 Scrum Guide: Q&A with Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland
The Scrum Guide has been updated to make it less prescriptive, using simpler language to address a wider audience. These changes have been done to make Scrum a “lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems”. An interview with Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland about the changes to the guide.
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Moving from Agile Teams towards an Agile Organization
For organizational agility, we need to improve the system for teams and individuals to thrive, instead of expecting them to change and fix the culture. This article explores some elements from a systemic point of view that are essential to create the right conditions for moving from agile teams towards an agile organization.
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Dealing with Remote Team Challenges
Remote working provides challenges such as providing equitable access, ensuring adequate resources and tooling, addressing social isolation and issues of trust. Remote-first and truly asynchronous teams tend to consistently perform better. In the future, organisations will continue to have remote on their agenda. Fully realising the benefits of remote teams requires trust building and intent.
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Q&A on the Book The Power of Virtual Distance
The book The Power of Virtual Distance, 2nd edition, by Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard Reilly, describes the Virtual Distance Model and provides data and insights from research that can be used to lower Virtual Distance when working remotely together. By doing so, organizations can see quantifiable improvements in both business goals and human well-being among employees.
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Q&A on the Book Virtual Teams Across Cultures
The book Virtual Teams Across Cultures, by Theresa Sigillito Hollema, examines what makes multicultural virtual teams tick – why they’re different and how to unlock their potential. This book is a comprehensive guide for reflective leaders who want to bring out the best in distributed, culturally diverse teams.
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Applying Languages of Appreciation in Agile Teams
Respect is one of the core values of Scrum. This can be shown in many ways, including appreciation for our team members. This article introduces the concept from Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages, and considers how this applies to our working relationships, how we identify the needs of our colleagues to feel supported and appreciated, and how this can be applied to appreciation in teams.