people metrics

Six-Hour Workdays: As Great As They Sound?

Companies in Sweden are experimenting with shifting to a six-hour workday. If employees have less time to do their work, they won't dabble in personal, time-wasting activities, so the same amount of work will still get done as in an eight-hour workday—or so the thinking goes. Would you try a six-hour workday?

Naomi Karten's picture
Naomi Karten
Make Sure Measuring Agile Metrics Is Really Leading to Improvement

In your quest to figure out how your team is doing with its agile process, gathering data can be useful—as long as it does not add significant overhead to your project or get in the way of delivering customer value. Don't let the desire to quantify your improvement get in the way of improving.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
A Quicker, More Effective Hiring Solution Is on the Way

Given the increasing demand for software talent, hiring is a big task in the IT world. But a startup has an idea for a platform that would help bring objectivity to the entire hiring process, from data collection to skill assessment to prospect evaluation. Would you trust your hiring to the cloud?

Mukesh Sharma's picture
Mukesh Sharma
Avoid Predictable Staffing Mistakes in an Economic Recovery

An economic downturn puts pressure on management to control costs, and sometimes, not much can be done about that. But it's important not to carry these penny-pinching habits into a recovery. There are observable patterns to labor costs that can help predict problems likely to happen in 2015.

Payson Hall's picture
Payson Hall
Leveraging Learning Techniques for Distributed Agile Teams

Cultural differences, geographical location, socio-economic level, and native language have a significant impact on learning styles. Understanding your global team and their preferred learning styles can play a big role in success. Explore these four different styles to get the most from your team.

Deepika Mamnani's picture
Deepika Mamnani
Ken Whitaker Presents Leading Software Teams Today at ADC/BSC East

Ken Whitaker of Leading Software Maniacs gave the first keynote presentation at Agile Development Conference & Better Software Conference East 2014. It was titled “From Chaos to Order: Leading Software Teams Today” and covered his five tenets of leadership to restore order to product management.

Cameron Philipp-Edmonds's picture
Cameron Philipp...
The Tech Industry's Diversity Problem Comes to Light

If you take a quick look at the data, it becomes clear that the tech industry has a diversity problem that’s yet to be fully addressed. About 70 percent of employees at Google are men, with 91 percent being either white or Asian. These numbers are consistent among the other major industry players.

Josiah Renaudin's picture
Josiah Renaudin
The Ups and Downs of Unlimited Vacation Time

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson doesn't treat paid time off quite the same as most bosses. Salaried employees who work at Virgin's main offices in New York, London, Geneva, and Sydney can take a vacation whenever they want, for however long they want. Is this as beneficial as it sounds?

Josiah Renaudin's picture
Josiah Renaudin