InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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Performance Goals For Agile Teams
Inspired by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith's book The Wisdom of Teams, Mishkin Berteig looks at the importance of performance goals for driving a team towards self-organization and accountability.
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Noted Professor Decries "Macro Management"
Dr. Henry Mintzberg, an outspoken and controversial scholar in business school circles, recently decried the "heroic leadership" stereotype which undermines organizations, propagated by the press and by MBA programs that stress leadership at the expense of practical management skills. He sees a need for more "distributed leadership," whose effectiveness lies in a community itself.
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Responding to Urgent Requests
In his article "How Two Hours Can Waste Two Weeks," Dmitri Zimine describes the costs associated with changing development priorities after the beginning of an iteration. Joel Spolsky took issue with Dmitri's comments, which in turn were defended and elaborated on by Mishkin Berteig.
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Common misconceptions about paired programming
Paired programming is an agile practice that is the source of much debate. Martin Fowler has posted an article on common misconceptions with paired programming, suggesting that pair programming is not a requirement of XP, it does not halve productivity, and others.
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What Creates Individual Productivity? Can We Improve It?
Is it helpful, or even possible, to change the productivity of individuals in a collaborative team? What exactly constitutes productivity, when deliverables come from teamwork? It's a tricky subject. We bring you highlights from a conversation held a few weeks ago on the AgileProjectManagement list.
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Study: Co-Located Teams vs. the Cubicle Farm
Many trainers agree that co-location is essential to really see the benefits of Agile, but proof of this has been largely anecdotal. On the ScrumDevelopment list recently, an interesting conversation was launched when a member pointed out a study conducted at a Fortune 50 auto maker, comparing productivity gains in collaborative workspaces versus traditional cubicle culture projects.
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Managing Agile Projects - How Hard Can It Be?
Agile projects emphasize self-organizing teams and tight IT/customer collaboration, but does this relieve managers of their role? Liz Barnett, editor-in-chief at AgileJournal.com believes it does not... that the manager role remains critical, though Agile does change it. Her recent article on managing Agile projects recommends some practices to focus on when switching to Agile management.
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Team Foundation Server SP 1 Beta 1.0 Released
A beta of the Team Foundation Server SP1 has been released via Microsoft Connect. This release contains new features as well as bug fixes. It is currently available in English and Japanese.
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Practitioners Adapt Agile to Local Constraints
Some people think they can only be Agile with small, co-located teams and full management support, but most teams aren't that lucky. So, should they should give up on Agile techniques? Scott Ambler's answer is a resounding "No!" His Dr. Dobbs article "Imperfectly Agile: You Too Can Be Agile!" outlines how Agilists overcome common challenges that others use as excuses for not being Agile.
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Opinion: Agile Forgets the Human Factor
Kevin Brady, self-declared Agile critic, has a problem with Agile software development approaches: he feels that while they look great on paper. they fail to work in reality because they forget the human factor. Commenters on his blog entry question whether Agile or poor implementation lie at fault.
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Put People First in Agile Distributed Testing
Baiju Joseph's new article on StickyMinds argues that, in order to build an effective testing team for distributed Agile, we need to focus on individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Based on the author's experience in setting up distributed agile testing teams, he lists numerous criteria that must be met in order to reach this goal.
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Opinion: Working in isolation breeds mistakes
Should the team room be a sanctuary? or a jazz improv session? On butUncleBob.com, Tim Ottinger blogs about his belief that the quiet bullpen is where mistakes are born, and allowed to breed.
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Interviewing for Agile Teams Podcast
Team dynamics can dramatically affect team performance, so staffing teams well is a critical success factor. Rob Myers, an Extreme Programming coach, has recorded a podcast "Interviewing Techniques for Staffing Lean-Agile Teams."
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Throwing the Keyboard is Not the Answer
Conflict is inevitable at work. Sooner or later, you will disagree about what to test, when to test, or how long to test software. How you approach the conflict affects the outcome and, more lastingly, how you feel about the exchange. On StickMinds last week, Esther Derby looked at some of the ways we approach conflict and how they affect solutions - and relationships.
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InfoQ Article: Exclusive Excerpt from Practices of an Agile Developer
Andy Hunt, one of the originators of the Agile Manifesto, and Venkat Subramaniam have written a compilation of the habits, ideas, and approaches of successful Agile software developers in "Practices of an Agile Developer". InfoQ brings you a free excerpt on Agile Debugging.