InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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Handling Team Changes
Change is constant, yet people fear change. It is mostly the fear of unknown and loss of comfort zones that makes the perception of a change painful. Though Agile teams are well prepared for change, however most of them are not comfortable when the change affects the team.
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Touch and Intimacy in Agile Teams
If the consolidation and integration of elementary Agile practice is ending, that means something new is starting. Does a new phase of innovation lie just ahead? Where is the edge of the new Agile frontier? InfoQ looked at the research of Michael de la Maza, an agile coach and trainer who is researching controversial topics such as intimacy in teams and organizations, to learn more.
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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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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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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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Key Elements of a Successful Agile Retrospective: Preparation and Participation
Agile retrospective helps the team examine what went well during the past sprint and identify the areas of improvement for the future sprints. However, sometimes the exercise of conducting a retrospective ends up as a futile effort due to lack of preparation. Moreover, key members of the team end up either not attending or not participating in the meeting.
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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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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.
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Is Measuring Hyper-Productivity a Waste of Time?
In a presentation about Shock Therapy, Jeff Sutherland mentioned that Hyper-Productivity is at least Toyota level of performance which is four times the industry average. In a recent discussion on the Scrum Development group, members debate whether it is both fruitful and possible to accurately measure productivity across sprints.
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Presentation: Teamwork Is An Individual Skill
Knowing how to get things done with others over whom you have no control may be your greatest lever for career success. Learn key strategies and agile team applications from 20 years of field studies on getting things with others. Apply the Responsibility Redefined™ framework to orient, work in, build, lead, and maintain teams, partnerships, and collaborations of any kind.
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Is Five the Optimal Team Size?
There have been a lot of discussions and debates about the optimal team size for maximum productivity. While most Agilists agree that smaller teams are more functional and productive as compared to larger teams, however defining the optimal team size is still a challenge.
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How Do You Get a Hyper-Productive Team?
Some of us have been lucky enough to be on hyper-productive teams, others think this is a myth. Joanna Zweig and Cesar Idrovo have been discussing Group Coherence - a search for hyper productivity with some insightful information for everyone trying to produce a hyper-productive team. Their research gives a possible model of how and why some Agile teams excel and others do not.
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Workspaces for Effective Agility
Author and Agile consultant, Mike Cohn recently wrote a blog entry summarizing a chapter in his new book Succeeding With Agile talking about the ideal Agile workspace. He points to things that need to be visible in the space an Agile team works in to help them be more effective.
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The Qualities of a Software Architect
The software/enterprise architect job is an important one. The duties of an architect are numerous and require specific leadership, communication and technical skills to be fulfilled.