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Is Your Culture about Responsibility or Blame? When things go wrong, it can be helpful to understand what happened and who was involved. However, all too often organizations (and the managers within) confuse responsibility with assigning blame. The former is essential for improvement. The latter works against an effective, collaborative, productive culture. |
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Beware of Success Stories The tendency to look back and think you know what contributed to a success is called survivorship bias. It occurs when you make a decision or take some action based on past successes while ignoring past failures. That's why it's important to approach reports of successful projects with a healthy dose of skepticism. |
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Lessons Learned from Product Failures Being agile is all about learning from failures and building on experiences. This applies to not just individuals, but even to large organizations. The key is being transparent and objective in accepting and understanding failures, and taking away lessons for future actions and decisions. Just keep innovating. |
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Coaching Senior Management to Be Agile Embracing an agile mindset isn’t always easy, and it can be especially difficult for senior managers who spent most of their careers working in more traditional development methodologies. By trying to speak the same language and demonstrating successful self-organization, teams can help senior management become agile. |
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Your Vacation Time Should Be Your Vacation Time Many people can’t take all the vacation time they’re entitled to. Some take it, but they're so constantly in contact that they might as well be in the office. Taking time off reduces stress, improves focus, and even increases productivity once you're back at work, so even if you can't travel, take your vacation time. |
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Building Good Scrum Habits Building good habits is an important part of an effective Scrum team. Habits are a form of automation: The more basic processes we can automate, the more we can focus our energy on hard things. The Scrum process, with its focus on rituals, helps us by providing a framework for collaboration and making it second nature. |
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Tips for Getting an Agile Transformation Off the Ground Many agile transformations are doomed before they even begin. Organizations focus on the wrong things up front, resulting in a poorly planned effort that doesn’t deliver business value. Here are some tips to get things started the right way, including how to communicate well, define roles, and change your culture. |
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Use Self-Evaluation to Stay on the Right Career Track Employer evaluations measure your performance against expected objectives, evaluate you against other employees, and aim to keep you relevant in your company. But it’s also a good idea to perform a self-examination in relationship to your place of employment, to ensure you stay attractive to potential future employers. |