InfoQ Homepage Teamwork Content on InfoQ
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How Blogging Empowers Agile Teams
Moving the thinking and decisions a team makes from people’s inboxes onto a blog can make it accessible to all, findable in the future, and referenceable by everyone. Instead of writing documentation, you can use blogumentation to transfer knowledge and document the history of projects that provide context to the code.
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How Personality Matters in Software Development
Leaders have to orchestrate diverse contributions from individuals with different personalities to build great teams. Team members might decide to act out of character and engage in behaviour outside their comfort zone to advance the team goal. To reduce the risk of burning out or compromising physical health, there should be restorative niches in which they can be their natural selves again.
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Agile 2017 Keynote: Creating Leadership and Engagement at Every Level
At the recent Agile 2017 conference in Orlando, David Marquet, retired Navy captain and author of best selling book “Turn The Ship Around!” gave an entertaining keynote on intent-based leadership.
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What a High Performing Team Looks Like and How to Create One
High performing is a team property, a temporary state which needs attention if teams want to keep on performing well. Things you can do to build a high performing team include creating safety, investing in developing collaboration skills, and giving peer-to-peer feedback.
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First Annual Retrospective Report Published
The First Annual Retrospective Report provides a deeper understanding of how retrospectives are used in the real world. The results indicate that retrospectives lead to improved team communication and productivity and help to create an environment of trust. Major challenges are that topics discussed cannot be solved by the team and people do not feel comfortable speaking up.
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QCon New York Day 1 – High Velocity Development Teams Track Summary
QCon New York was heeled this week. This is a summary of the key messages from the opening keynote and from the High Velocity Development Teams track.
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Atlassian Opens up Team Health Monitors and Team Playbook Blueprints
After introducing a tool-agnostic version of its Team Health Monitors at Summit 2016, Atlassian now also bundles Team Playbook blueprints with the recently released Confluence Server 6.1. A Health Monitor workshop is a team self-assessment aiming to identify pain points and formulate a plan to address weak spots by running low-ceremony "plays" that "can help improve a team's overall health".
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Michael Nir on Conduct Objectives for High Team Performance
Michael Nir will give a talk at the upcoming Agile Games conference titled "Bring the Scrum Master a Glass of Water: Conduct Objectives for High Performance Team". InfoQ spoke to Nir about the goal of Conduct Objectives, the way to measure behavior, the common problem with the appreciation of personalities, how to use a Team Charter, and the link with Core Protocols.
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Open Office Layouts Bad for Productivity and Memory
A recent BBC article revived the discussion about the "best" office layout for productive knowledge work - how spaces impact culture, productivity and collaboration.
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Cultivating Attention and Awareness in Teams
Technology makes it easier to collaborate, but also distracts us and can have negative consequences on the quality and content of our personal interactions. The mere presence of a cell phone can pull you away from a task and reduce your focus. An interview with Jeffery Hackert on cultivating attention, awareness and empathy when working in teams, and giving and receiving uninterrupted attention.
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Experimenting with Peer Feedback in Tech Teams
Feedback can be used to build trust in teams and help individuals improve their skills and grow in their craft. Emily Page and Doug Talbot shared their experiences from experimenting with peer feedback at Ocado Technology at Spark the Change London 2016. An interview with Emily Page, Organizational Catalyst at Ocado Technology.
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What José Mourinho Can Teach Us about Team Building
Alan O’Callaghan gave a presentation at the Scrum Gathering Portugal 2016 on what José Mourinho can teach us about team building. Starting with the similarities between Football and Scrum, the talk addresses the less understood characteristic that affects Scrum’s effectiveness, that is, according to the speaker, the building of self-organising teams.
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How to Deal with Cognitive Biases That Hinder Collaboration
People are hardwired to instantly decide who we trust, but also to work collaboratively in small groups. Cognitive biases can get in the way of collaboration, but when you understand how these biases work and what agile practices can do to help, you are more likely to build better interpersonal relationships and create successful products.
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Google and the Perfect Team
Google researchers studied teams and what traits help with their efficiency. Named Project Aristotle, the study provides insight into what helps teams succeed, such as psychological safety, structure, and a sense of purpose.
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Continuous Improvement Beyond Retrospectives
If you want continuous improvement you can start with retrospectives, but you must go far beyond that with change management, culture change, and innovation. The most important thing in order to make change happen in organizations is creating new habits and changing your culture.