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How to Grab People's Attention In this hectic, fast-paced world, it can be tough getting anyone’s attention. But you’re more likely to succeed if you quickly arouse interest, generate intrigue, and make an impression. One way to do that is with a hook—an opening statement or question that quickly piques curiosity. Here's how to grab attention. |
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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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How to Manage a Challenging Audience When You’re Giving a Presentation Most audiences will be courteous when you’re giving a presentation. But it can be a challenge to face customers, senior managers, or even coworkers who persistently disagree with you, constantly interrupt you, treat you rudely, or otherwise disrupt your presentation. Here are some ways to cope without losing your cool. |
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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?” |