InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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Creating a Multi-Team Test Automation Solution
A solid test framework with automated tests can increase the confidence to release. Cross-team pairing on the framework made it possible for a team to build quality in from the start; it also brought the teams together and upskilled the testers in test automation.
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Heroes Are Expensive - Extinguishing the Firefighting Culture
Sue Johnston gave a talk at the recent Agile2018 Conference in San Diego titled "Heroes Are Expensive - Extinguishing The Firefighting Culture". She identified how to spot a hero, what leads team members and leaders to heroics, what the impact is, what we can do about it, and how we can redefine what a Hero is.
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Ben Gracewood on Learning from an Organisational Train Wreck
At the recent JAFAC conference, Ben Gracewood told the story of how POS developer Vend transformed their development organisation following catastrophic disruption and losses. He explored what happened after they reduced headcount by over 30%, what they had in place that enabled them to survive, and what they did differently as a result of the changes.
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Sandy Mamoli on Holacracy for Humans
Sandy Mamoli has been supporting New Zealand transport ticketing company Snapper in their adoption of holacracy over the last two years. At a recent Agile Welly meetup session she explained what holacracy is, described their journey to date, the benefits they’ve found, and provided advice for others considering holarcacy.
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Making Games for High Performing Teams
The gamestorming model describes a process to create games. It provides concepts like game space, boundaries, rules, artifacts and goals, for creating compelling learning experiences in an organizational setting. Such games can be used by teams to experiment, focus on outcomes, and try out disruptive patterns.
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Incorporating Improv into Agile with Games
The rules of Improv provide a short-hand to enhance active listening, collaboration, and mutual reinforcement skills, all of which are integral to Agility. You can incorporate Improv activities and games to reinforce Agile mindset. The game debrief is where the value of the game becomes sustainable, as it explicitly ties emotions and aha-moments from the game experience to working scenarios.
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Finding Talented People and Building Sustainable Teams
Meetups, hackathons and conferences are fantastic opportunities to promote your company's work and ethos and meet talented people. You can learn a lot more about a person if you let them drive the conversation initially in a job interview. Having room to grow professionally and psychological safety are key to building sustainable teams, and establish a collaborative, cohesive engineering culture.
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Cultivating Psychological Safety
When we’re feeling stressed, threatened, or unsafe, it becomes harder to think creatively, work collaboratively, and solve problems. You can cultivate a culture of safety by letting folks know that it’s safe to make mistakes, by listening for real understanding, and by practicing mindfulness.
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Jeff Patton on Fixing Agile Product Ownership
At the recent Agile India conference, Jeff Patton gave a keynote talk in which he challenged the way agile development approaches Product Ownership. He holds that product management is a discipline which was around before the Scrum term Product Owner was coined, and the way it has been applied in most agile organisations is, at best, a watered-down approach and real product management is needed.
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Dealing with the Broken Human Machine: How to Create High-Performing Teams
To really progress in developing software and build anything at a scale, you have to examine your blind spots and learn to deal with people. The culture we build is important: the difference between a high performing engineering team and a low performing one is orders of magnitude in terms of productivity and quality. Focusing on how we do things is as important as what we’re doing.
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Data-Driven Thinking for Continuous Improvement
Organizations need an objective way to measure performance and tie actions back to business outcomes to improve continuously. Avvo uses a data-driven decision framework with an autonomous team model and a practice of retrospectives to help people make better decisions and proposals for continuous improvement.
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Should Teams Decouple Cadences?
Recently a Twitter discussion took place about allowing teams to have multiple cadences, for instance by using a different rhythm for planning the work and for learning and improving. Decoupling cadences gives teams room to explore and learn what works best for them; it can lead to more adaptability and autonomy and better outcomes.
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Game Changers for Organizations
We want to approach strategy using choices, direction, and iterative experiments, establish a growth mindset in organizations, and work towards a common purpose or goal with leaders and teams sharing the same values, principles, and mindset; these are some of the game changers for organizations to become more innovative, deliver faster and better, and have happier and more engaged employees.
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The Toyota Way at Codeweavers
Codeweavers combines the Toyota way with extreme programming and continuous delivery in development and support to do small, frequent releases. The advice to apply the Toyota way is to start with the books, understand the philosophy, and begin teaching it to others.
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Experimenting with Self-Organisation
Self-organising teams are much more effective, engaged and happier. Not everyone is comfortable with self-organising; people are conditioned to do what they are told and mainly to work on their own. You need modern leadership approaches like intent-based leadership, sociocracy, and holacracy, to enable self-organising teams.