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Growing Generalized Specialists on an Agile Team A generalized specialist is not a jack of all trades. It is an individual with deep knowledge in a particular specialization who also has learned to be productive in other team roles. Here are some tips on how to grow generalized specialists on your team in order to maximize your team's productivity potential. |
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Designing an Office to Nurture Innovative Agile Development Teams Agile software development is a collaborative activity in many ways, but it also requires quiet time. While open office spaces foster communication and collaboration, it's still important for a workspace to have areas where people can buckle down and work. What is the best office configuration to nurture innovation? |
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To Improve Agile Teamwork, Think about the Individuals Given the emphasis on teams, it can be easy to forget that agile has the value of individuals and interactions as a central principle. As much as an effective team dynamic is what makes Scrum work, teams are composed of individual people, and it’s important to acknowledge each person's role and to express appreciation. |
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Develop Stronger Client Relationships through Empathetic Action There’s a big difference between simply saying "I feel your pain" and displaying evidence of empathy. When dealing with clients' complaints and issues, do more than try to understand what they're going through. Aim to communicate early, often, and with sincere concern. It will improve the situation for them—and you. |
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Craftsmanship: The Software Testers’ Goal Some people just don’t care about creating great products or services. They believe the marketplace will settle for lower quality. Lee Copeland argues that as software testers, we need to combat that way of thinking by embracing craftsmanship. Focus on quality with knowledge, skill, diligence, judgment, and passion. |
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5 Strategies to Get Approval to Attend a Conference Your organization isn’t in business to send you to trade shows, seminars, and fun-in-the-sun conferences. There has to be a solid business reason for you to attend, and you’ll improve the odds of getting the OK to go if you can make a comprehensive justification for going. Here are five things to focus on. |
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Catch Small Failures Early with Agile Practices Agile is designed to keep failures small and manageable. It’s essential to be able to talk about small failures and ways to improve during the retrospective so that the teams can advance their agile practices. If your teams can’t talk about their small failures openly, there is a great risk of bigger troubles soon. |
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If You’re Working Too Much, Is It a Challenging Project or Bad Management? Projects sometimes encounter challenges that require team members to put in extra work. But if this is happening repeatedly, it's worth figuring out where the pressure is coming from. You may need to ask, “Is this project simply challenging, or is it being badly managed?” |