InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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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.
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Coaching Self Organizing Teams
Joseph Pelrine promised to teach us “how to be a manipulative bastard” with respect to coaching teams. Joseph feels that coaching as a discipline lacks the scientific background and rigor that it needs: "Air guitar and attitude" won't do - Allan Kay. His goal to is to supply that rigor.
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Agile 2008: The Wisdom of Crowds and Agile Teams
James Surowiecki, author of the Wisdom of Crowds, gave the keynote speech that opened Agile 2008 on Tuesday, August 5. The thesis behind the wisdom of crowds is simple: given the right circumstances, a group of people can make a decision that is better than the best answer of most (if not all) of the group's members.
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Interview: Jean Tabaka About Team Collaboration and RAPID Management
In this interview made by Deborah Hartmann of InfoQ, Jean Tabaka talks about team collaboration as a key ingredient of the Agile development, but she also mentions RAPID management as a solution for the product owners who found themselves in an Agile environment.
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Presentation: Developing Expertise: Herding Racehorses, Racing Sheep
In this presentation made during QCon London 2007, Dave Thomas talks about expanding people's expertise in their domains of interest by not treating them uniformly as they had the same amount of knowledge and level of experience.
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Renowned Orchestra Embraces Scrum-like Practices
A Scrum team has no designated leader; the team is expected to self-organize. Similarly, one of the world's most renowned orchestras has dispensed entirely with the role of conductor in favor of a process where leadership is shared and decisions are made by the team. Along the way, they have learned lessons and ways of working together that any Scrum team can benefit from.
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Agile Coaches Attend First AgileCoachCamp
An Agile Coach is someone who helps a team, or an entire organization, adopt and improve their agile practices. AgileCoachCamp, held this spring in Ann Arbor Michigan, was the first ever conference specifically for agile coaches. The participants, who came from as far away as India, Sweden, and Ukraine, self-organized to put on more than 60 sessions during the open space conference.
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How to Evaluate a Good Fit for XP?
XP might not be for everyone. An interesting discussion on the Extreme Programming group, tries to find the factors, on which, an individual should be evaluated, to determine, whether he is fit to be on an XP team.
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Truthfulness - an Agile Value?
Declan Whelan wrote a thought-provoking blog citing an idea he learned from Mishkin Berteig about an (unspoken) principle behind successful Agile teams: truthfulness. The idea is simple: without individuals being honest and open, most agile practices will not work.
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Voting Someone Off the Island on an Agile Team
On Agile teams there is a definite possibility of having a team member who is not a good fit. Members of the Agile community discuss the reasons and possible ways of voting someone off the island.
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Do Specialists Outperform Generalists on an Agile Team?
An Agile team is mostly a cross functional team comprising of generalists and specialists. Jurgen Appelo, challenges this concept and suggests that having just specialists on an Agile team adds more value. The post tries to correlate various view points on team composition by other members of the Agile community.
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What Might Happen if You Asked a Powerful Question?
Too often leaders, pressed for time, throw the easiest question at a team. But a moment's reflection, followed by a wise open-ended question can generate new possibilities when a team is stuck. This centuries-old educational technique, sometimes called "Powerful Questions," is a great tool for all team members, to transform "stuck" situations into learning opportunities.
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Article: Distributed Version Control Systems - a guide
Since Linus Torvalds presentation at Google about git in May 2007, the adoption and interest for Distributed Version Control Systems has been constantly rising. In this article, Sebastien Auvray introduces the concept of Distributed Version Control, see when to use it, why it may be better than what you're currently using, and have a look at three actors in the area: git, Mercurial and Bazaar.
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Evaluating and Improving Architectural Competence - A New SEI Paper
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) recently published a paper entitled "Evaluating and Improving Architectural Competence", which looks at using four models of human behaviour to help assess and improve software architecture competence.
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Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools Released
Microsoft has released the March 2008 version of the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools.