InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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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.
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Handling Your Team's "Rotten Apple"
Recently there has been an active discussion in the Scrum Development Yahoo Group about handling an "under-performing" team member. In the 130+ response thread, "Rotten apple in Scrum team", talk ranged from advice for the primary question, to talk of team morale and who manages it, to the classic debate of measuring individuals, to distinguishing whether a team is really a "team", and more.
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Scrum of Scrums - Issues and Value
The Scrum of Scrums meeting "is an important technique in scaling Scrum to large project teams. These meetings allow clusters of teams to discuss their work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration." Allan Shalloway asked for people's experience "on Scrum-of-Scrums for coordinating teams vs scaling Scrum to the enterprise" he sees problems in with large groups (350 people).
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Team Foundation Server for Telecommuters
Back when Visual SourceSafe was the de facto version control for Windows developers, remote access was a major problem. Products like SourceOffSite were a necessity for anyone working remotely. While globalization and unstable fuel prices continue to drive increases in telecommuting, Microsoft is still neglecting this sector, leaving opportunities for smaller companies like Teamprise.
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Presentation: Jim McCarthy and 11 Commitments For a Shared Vision
In this presentation filmed during Agile 2008, Jim McCarthy talks about 11 commitments team members should adhere to if they want to achieve a state of shared vision. Such a state empowers a team to reach their full potential and ultimately attain greatness.
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Agility Means Truthfulness
Talk about agile can often tend toward the tangible things that people do day-to-day, toward the "process of agile", but true agility is really less about process and more about principle. Travis Birch presents his perspective about some of these more intangible aspects of agile, namely "truthfulness".
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Handling Absence in Scrum Teams
Absence of a team member whether planned or unplanned can potentially affect the velocity of an Agile team. A discussion on the Scrum Development group tries to find ways to deal with absence.
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Making Retrospective Changes Stick
Agile teams may find it easy to talk about change during their retrospectives, but not so easy to make that change actually happen. Esther Derby, well-known thought-leader on the human aspects of software development, recounts an experience from her personal improvement efforts to illustrate this and offer a few suggestions on how to succeed with making change actually happen.
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Card Game Teaches Distributed Project Communication Lessons
Charles Suscheck presented how he uses a variation of the card game Rummy to teach the importance of communication, planning, and collaboration on projects at Agile2008. The game explores the effects of various levels of distribution on a team, as well as the impact of adding or removing experts on the team during a project.