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Handling the Emotional Turmoil of Organizational Change Chaos, confusion, and emotional turmoil are not unusual during major organizational change. Nevertheless, even people at the top sometimes minimize the impact of the change on employees—and on themselves. Worse, they sometimes do so dismissively. It's important not to underestimate the challenge of managing change. |
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How Testers Can Collaborate with the ScrumMaster ScrumMasters serve the team by providing facilitation and coaching, but they also have many challenges. Those in testing roles are in a good position to collaborate with the ScrumMaster to improve agile processes. Here are some ways testers can partner with, support, and assist the ScrumMaster—and the rest of the team. |
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How Face-to-Face Meetings Can Heal Team Conflicts When distributed teams have a conflict, it's easy for one team to place the blame entirely on the other and even start to think of them as disagreeable, incompetent, and worse. This fault-finding can be especially bad when the parties have never met. Face-to-face meetings can make all the difference in improving trust. |
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The Hidden Benefit of One-on-One Manager Meetings Managers may frame one-on-one meetings as a way to “support employees” and check to see if the employee “needs to meet this week.” Supporting an employee is a primary goal of these meetings, but the value of one-on-one time to managers—and the importance of building trust with employees—also should be prioritized. |
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Testing in a Pair Programming Environment If a development team does pair programming, where does testing fit in? You don't have to wait until the programming is done—testers can be part of the whole process, from code design to reviewing changes to production. Pair programming plus a good automation strategy mean quality is built in throughout development. |
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Why Agile Is a Double-Edged Sword When It Comes to Quality When it comes to quality, agile very often leads to better applications and just stronger testing overall. However, the rapidity of agile can make it even more difficult to keep up with bugs since you’re iterating at speeds teams often just aren’t used to. |
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During Times of Major Change, Keep People Informed During times of major change, readily available information can help reduce the fears of those affected about what it means for them. If you’re involved in implementing change, it’s wise to keep people informed—not just about the change itself, but also about its impact on processes, responsibilities, and expectations. |
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The Manager’s Role on a Self-Organizing Agile Team Scrum and other agile methods focus on team roles and dynamics, and because of the emphasis on self-organizing teams, there’s sometimes a misconception that there’s no need for a manager. In reality, good people management can help an agile team thrive—the manager just has to know how to empower the team. |
